


Descent

by LaceOriginals (LacePendragon)



Series: The Metahuman Initiative [Web Serial] [1]
Category: Original Work, The Metahuman Initiative
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Autistic Character, Blood and Injury, Crimes & Criminals, Dark, Disability, Drama, Friendship, Gen, LGBTQ Themes, Mental Health Issues, Moderate Science Fiction, Multiple Timelines, Mystery, Non-binary character, Other, Queer Characters, Queer Relationships, Queer Themes, Science Fiction, Slow Burn, Superpowers, Superpowers/Superheroes, The Metahuman Initiative - Freeform, Trauma, Trauma Recovery, Triggers In First Author's Note, Violence, Web Serial, contemporary, grey morality, multiple POVs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-01-01 04:55:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18329036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LacePendragon/pseuds/LaceOriginals
Summary: Nine years ago, the Radcliffe Incident created a wave of new Metahumans across the globe.Nine months ago, a diner, north of Veda City, exploded.Nine minutes ago, Nat Carter became the first person to ever break out of Sanctum, the Metahuman prison at the centre of Veda City.Each incident only exists because of those that came before it.After Nat Carter's arrival in Veda City, everything changes. The most powerful person to ever come from outside the Metahuman cities, Nat is a force that cannot be controlled, and they've come to Veda to search for something important.University student Chase Steele finds herself pulled into Nat's world as the two run into each other time and time again, and as her feelings for Nat grow, so does her fear in what they are doing.And Nicki Stavos, the Invisible Trickster, watches from above, knowing that Nat's arrival was foretold by his late mentor, and that Nat, dangerous as they are, could be the catalyst for change that he's been looking for.With one of Veda's greatest secrets under threat, everyone is on guard, and when the smoke clears, the one left standing will hold all the power.





	1. Part One: Ignition

**Author's Note:**

> **Dedication**  
>  To my friends, for keeping their enthusiasm for over a year as I rewrote this.
> 
> And to fifteen year old me, who babbled every lunchtime about this damn story. It took nine years, but here we are.
> 
>  
> 
>  **Trigger Warnings for Entire Book:**  
>  Sexual harassment, injury, blood/moderate gore, panic attacks, PTSD, self-harm/mutilation, gaslighting.
> 
> For specific chapters, please message me on Tumblr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theme for this chapter: [Burn the Stars by Massive Vibes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzkKvrHm7jY)

#  **Part One: Ignition**

**Nat Carter**

_Now_

From thunderstorm to gray drizzle, the rain dissipated. Instead of the torrent that Nat had expected, they were greeted with a splattering of rain that dribbled onto their skin like the drool of some heaven-bound dog. Or maybe the disdainful spit of God.

Despite that, they closed their eyes and tilted back their head, letting the heat of the summer night, the dampness of the warm, sticky rain, and the crisp, bitter scent that the breeze carried, wash over them. The scent of saline, medical wipes, and metal left their body, changing to the bitterness of ozone and the tang of blood.

The pain that thrummed through their body alleviated in the face of freedom.

Nat took a deep breath, held it, and let it out, allowing their awareness to spread out into the area around them. Cars, lights, phones, computers. The power grid of the district. A nearby person with a watch. Electricity crackled across their right hand and their mangled, bloodied, and broken left hand, danced up their arms, and tangled itself into the short, filthy strands of their dark hair.

White-gold electricity, warmer than anything in the city, danced across the dark expanse of their skin and the tattered remnants of their bloodstained clothes.

Nat opened their eyes and stared up at the clouds. Too much gray. Too much of the white-blue light that permeated Veda and burned through every inch of the city. But in time, they’d see the stars again. In time, the moon would shine. In time, the sun would burn through the artificial shadows that allowed the darkness to sweep into the centre of this blinding city.

Yes. Soon, things would change. Their escape from their underground prison proved as much. If they could escape Sanctum, then what place in Veda could hold them? If those so-called unbreakable collars and cuffs could be broken, then what could bind them?

“Hello, Nat.”

One corner of Nat’s mouth twitched up. They pivoted, eyes narrowing, and found their spectre in the shadows, his eyes, with their irises as black as his pupils, gleamed in the late night.

“Nicki.” The name hung in mid-air. Flat, frustrated. Nat scowled at him, all amusement vanishing in a moment. “Nice of you to finally show up.”

Nicki stepped out of the shadows and shrugged, spreading his hands and cocking his head to one side. His mouth slanted like the crooked hold of his shoulders, and his eyes seemed to glow even darker than before.

“I was busy.” Three words. That was all Nat was afforded. While they’d rotted for nine days as their world fell apart. He’d been ‘busy’. Just ‘busy’.

Lightning crackled against Nat’s outline, dancing upon the prison clothes they still wore. The plastic-paper hybrid _bullshit_ that made up their medical bracelet crackled, crisped, and fell away as ash.

“Right.” Nat’s words were bitter, flat. “Busy.”

Nicki shrugged again and let out a soft chuckle, lifting a hand to sweep back his black, unruly hair. He flashed a grin at Nat, crooked and sly.

“Oh come on, now, Nat. You know you're not my only… _companion_ in this city.” He hesitated and drew out the word, as if he wasn’t sure how to describe Nat. Nat’s scowl deepened. “Ally?” he offered. Nat folded their arms across their chest and ground their teeth together. “Friend?”

“Don’t you _dare_ .” Nat’s words came out as a growl, teeth bared and nose curled as they snarled. “You have no _right_ \--” Their voice cracked and they looked away, vision blurred and arms falling to their sides. “Not after this.”

Nicki sighed, uncharacteristically soft, and spoke in a similar tone, “I understand you’re mad at me. You have every right to be. But the fact of the matter is, Nat, that you are just as wanted, just as feared, and just as criminal as I am. Right now, I’m all you have, love.”

Nat sniffled, hard, and clenched their fists at their sides. Pain ripped through their left hand and arm. Screamed into their mind and fought for attention. Nat afforded it none. Physical pain was easy.

They stared down at the blurry ground. At their bare and soaking feet. At the growing puddles from the sloppy rain.

In their mind’s eye, they saw Giovanni, stepping in front of them, arguing, only for blood to bloom in his chest when he was shot.

Was he even alive?

Nat swallowed.

They saw Chase, laughing, tucking hair behind one ear as she smiled at Nat, her lips hovering above a straw in her iced coffee. Then again, that mouth, flat, as Nat fell to their knees in front of her.

They saw Zoe, arms waving and gapped tooth grin showing. They saw Zoe, tinkering with cuffs and collars. “Just in case,” she’d always said.

Nat’s fists curled deeper. Their nails bit into their dark skin, bringing crescents of blood to the surface. Their left hand screamed once more. Nat ignored the pain as the lightning soothed their tattered nerves.

They took a breath.

“Maybe you are,” said Nat. They lifted their head. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

He nodded, lips pursed. “Of course.”

“What now?” asked Nat, their words hanging in the air. They narrowed their gaze at Nicki and unclenched their fists. “What’s the plan?”

His gaze went to their mangled hand. “Well, firstly, I’m getting you to a healer. Get that hand bound and fixed up.” His eyes met Nat’s. Black against dark brown, tinted with gold. “But after that, my schedule is open.” He spread his hands again and tilted his head, lifting his chin so that he stared down at Nat through their four inch height difference, eyes darker than midnight. The darkness furthered by the pale expanse of his skin. “What do you want?”

_What do you want?_

Images flashed behind Nat’s eyes. Slow at first, then, faster.

Kids, staring, screaming. Police, raising guns. The trees, biting, in the middle of the night, cutting into Nat as they ran from floodlights. Snarls of dogs. Daisy, smiling. Then, her eyes growing wide in fear.

And, lastly, a woman, crouching in front of Nat with a smile.

_“You are brilliant, eolin-i, like a newborn star. Do not let them take that from you.” She held out her hand to Nat, smiling at their scraped knees and falling tears. Nat stared at the hand. “Do you want to learn to control your gift?”_

_With a nod, Nat reached out and took her hand._

Nat flinched, looked away from Nicki, and took a shaky breath.

“They think I’m a monster.” Their voice was hoarse, barely audible, but the wind died as they spoke, and the sounds of the city seemed to fade. As if the whole world was holding its breath.

“They do,” agreed Nicki, his voice soft.

Nat swallowed and breathed deeply through their nose. They lifted their head and locked eyes with Nicki.

“Then let’s prove them right.” Defeat clung to Nat like a physical beast. They were so damn _tired_. But none of this was over. It was only just barely beginning. “Let’s show them why dropping the god of thunder into an electric city was a bad idea.”

Nicki’s smile spread, as dark as his eyes. “Chaos and destruction. A beautiful combination, if I may say so.” He lifted a hand toward Nat. “But is that all you want?”

Another image. Radcliffe, in Sanctum. Her red-brown curls limp against her face. Her sunken cheeks filled with drooping freckles. Her gaze blank, dead. The collar and cuffs stark and black against her skin, a brown only a shade lighter than Nat’s own.

“For now,” said Nat, shaking off the memories.

“Right then,” said Nicki, some of his British accent returning. “Shall we?” This time, he held out his hand for them to take.

And Nat, knowing they were damned, took it.

* * *

  **Chase Steele**

 _Nine Months Ago_  

Scratching pencils and tapping keys echoed through the full lecture hall. The smell of breakfast sandwiches mixed with coffee, deodorant, the occasional perfume and body spray. Chase perched, four rows back, one leg folded over the other at the knee. High enough that she could survey the room and read the boards and powerpoints, but close enough that Professor Dalton could see her hands clearly.

“The theory of Metahumans is quite simple, as we all know. Today, we will build on that theory and begin our deep dive into the advanced theory, which will serve as our foundation as we study the cultural and technological changes Metahumans have caused, the anthropological and sociological studies surrounding Metahumans, and the predicted outcomes of these current studies and trends.” Professor Dalton’s voice rang loud and clear as he spoke. His gesticulations were exaggerated sign language, mixed in with some colloquialisms Chase had picked up from him. “Before I begin, let’s have a few hands. Tell me about the basics of Meta theory.” He gestured again. “Don’t be shy.”

A hand in the back, just inside Chase’s periphery vision.

“Yes, Mr. Stapleton.”

The guy’s voice, smooth as silk, reminded Chase of hot coffee. She thought he might have been one of the regulars at the coffee shop she worked at. One of the more flirtatious ones. But there were so many creepy guys trying to smooth talk their way into her pants that they’d all started to blend together.

“A Metahuman manifests when he or she is forced to overcome a stressor that cannot be overcome with his or her current abilities.” Chase rolled her eyes at his words. Seriously, dude. Just say _they._ It was more inclusive anyways. “The stress activates what we presume to be a Metahuman specific gene and the ability is born.” Chase drummed her pencil against her notebook and rolled her eyes. “Simple.”

And totally wrong. At least on the specifics.

“Not bad, Mr. Stapleton,” said Professor Dalton, a patient tone in his voice. “But not completely accurate, either. Anyone else?” Chase fought a grin when Stapleton squawked in the background, like a bird whose lunch had been snatched up by another.

Another hand, this one in front of Chase. The owner was Liesel Jaeger, one of Chase’s favourite classmates. If Stapleton was the bottom of the cesspool of douchebag, bigoted, wannabe philosophers, then Liesel was the star that shone brightest in the sky. Brilliant, beautiful, and intelligent in every way that mattered. So high above the wannabe jerkbags that she didn’t even know they existed.

...Yeah, Chase had a bit of a crush. Be Liesel or date Liesel? Why not both? But she was so far out of Chase’s league that it was almost funny.

Well, it would have been funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.

“Yes, Ms. Jaeger.” Professor Dalton beamed. He shifted, as if waiting, excitedly, for what Liesel had to say. Chase, likewise, straightened up, her pencil poised and her ears perked.

“If you’d actually paid attention in class,” started Liesel, firing a look up the rows toward Stapleton, who scowled and slumped in his seat, arms folded across his chest, “you’d know that there are many factors in the birth of Metahumans.”

 _Birth_. It was the word that Professor Dalton used with wild abandon, speaking of Metahumans as if they were reborn from the ashes of their own destruction. Like a phoenix, he said, and the sketches of the fiery birds scattered throughout Chase’s notes attested to her own thoughts on the subject.

“It’s true that a stressor is the main component in whether or not a person activates _their_ Meta gene.” Liesel’s mouth twitched. Stapleton scowled further. Chase fought a grin. “But it goes much further than that. Physical stressors must mix with the right amount of mental and emotional stressors, as well as a healthy amount of resilience.” Liesel drummed her fingers against her open notebook, the sound barely audible to Chase’s ears. “This cocktail is what allows a Meta ability to emerge, and while it was hypothesized that these abilities were connected to the stressor, we’ve realized it goes much deeper than that, now that the MAI is in place.” She shrugged, then looked at Professor Dalton. “So, if we were to study basic theory at such a level, we must know advanced theory as well, if only to understand the basics.”

Professor Dalton chuckled. “And there inlies my plan for the rest of the semester: learning advanced theory in order to _advance_ our understanding of basic theory.” His eyes twinkled as he smiled at Liesel. “Well done, Ms. Jaeger, well done.”

She leaned back in her seat and smiled, her chin up and her shoulders back. Chase bit back a sigh.

“So.” Professor Dalton clapped his hands. “Advanced theory. Any guesses as to where we’re starting?” No hands went up. The professor chuckled. “Oh come on now. Well, I have a bit of a surprise. We’re going to be starting with my personal area of expertise: _Entropy._ ”

Chase straightened in her seat. The room went silent. Professor Dalton’s smile grew, his eyes bright behind his circular glasses.

“That got your attention.” He smiled as he spoke.

 _Entropy._ The word spread, wildfire through the class. Notebooks and papers rustled, pens clicked. Everyone leaned forward.

This was the reason most had taken Professor Dalton’s class. His studies on Metahuman Entropy, also known as ME, were some of the most in-depth and complete studies on the topic in the world. Metas had been around since the tail-end of World War 1, but no one wanted to talk about one of the great unifiers of them, as a species: Entropy.

It was why Chase wanted to be an anthropologist of Metahumans, so that she could study how Entropy affected Metahumans, the societies and cultures they both lived in and created, as well as the long term effects of Metahuman Entropy Death, or MED.

Unfortunately, despite her early studies, she hadn’t learned much. Entropy studies weren’t meant to be beginner friendly, and were so tied up in jargon to prevent the studies from being exploited that it had taken Chase the entire summer between high school and her first year of university, some three years ago, to decode a singular, eight page paper.

Damn academia.

Chase’s gaze went to the clock and she frowned. Professor Dalton’s class was only an hour, twice a week, and they’d burned most of the hour on discussing last week’s quiz, which roughly half the class had failed. He was taking the quiz out of their marks, and had apologized for the quiz and its phrasing, but the class had still wanted to go over it - Chase included - for the future.

Which meant they’d have to finish this lecture next class. But there was still a tiny bit of time until class was over, so Chase let her pencil hover just above the page and waited eagerly.

“Entropy!” Professor Dalton gesticulated wildly, sign language giving away and then returning the next time he spoke. Chase shook her head, grateful for her hearing. “The most taboo subject of Metahumans. Does anyone know the basic concept of Entropy?”

No hands raised. Professor Dalton frowned. Chase ran her research over in her head and, after a moment, raised her hand partway.

“Ms. Steele,” his smile split open his face, “always a pleasure. Please.” He gestured for her to continue.

Chase set down her pen and lifted her hands, not bothering to turn to face the rest of the class. Most of them didn’t know sign in any real capacity, and Professor Dalton would translate, anyway.

‘Entropy is similar in Metahumans as it is in physics. Over time, things break down and descend into disorder.’ She hesitated, pursing her lips as she thought over her words. ‘Energy is finite. The more powerful the Metahuman, the more energy they expend. Eventually, this energy runs out, and Entropy begins.’

That was about all she knew, or at least, what she could explain, and she let her hands fall to the desk to signal Professor Dalton that she was done.

He translated to the rest of the class, which sent pencils and pens skittering across papers and keyboards clacking beneath fingertips.

“A good start, Ms. Steele.” Professor Dalton nodded to her before speaking again. “And quite accurate, as well.” His voice picked up, leaning into his lecture voice, and Chase snatched up her pencil. “The theory of Metahuman Entropy is based on the theory of entropy throughout the universe. Energy is finite, as Ms. Steele said, and it is theorized that Metahuman energy is as finite as any other. The more powerful the Metahuman, the quicker they consume this energy. Once this energy has been fully consumed, Metahuman abilities seem to feed on the body and mind, breaking them down until the Metahuman ability consumes the person and, quite simply, kills them.”

Whispers ran through the classroom and Chase frowned, tapping her pencil to her notebook. There was more to it than that, she knew, from her limited research. Entropy didn’t just _consume_ a person and kill them, it destroyed them, taking everyone around them with it. Entropy could rip a body apart and tear the Metahuman ability free from its physical chains, leaving destruction in its wake before it finally burned out.

There was one incident, in particular, from the city. One that had started the embargo on Entropy research.

“Now, we’ve run out of time for today, unfortunately,” said Professor Dalton, “so we’ll have to continue this next week, but I encourage you all to do some reading on your own. In your texts, chapter 8 and 9 focus on Entropy. Much of this won’t make sense yet, but please skim the introduction to each chapter for next class. And--” He paused as the students gathered up their bags and coats. “--Please remember that there is a paper due at the end of the month on the Metahuman Classification Method. Five pages minimum!” Students rushed out of the room, chatter ramping up around them, and Chase waited until the room was mostly clear before she hopped down the steps and caught Professor Dalton’s attention.

He smiled at her, head tilted to one side. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Ms. Steele?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

Chase clicked her tongue a few times as she gathered her words. ‘Wanted to talk about my final paper.’

He nodded. “Of course.” He gathered up his messenger bag and tucked the papers into it before turning back to Chase. “What about it?”

‘I’d like to do it on Entropy.’

He blanched. “Are you certain?”

She nodded. He sighed.

“I suppose that’s all well and good, Ms. Steele, but I must caution you against it. Entropy is a very taboo topic in Metahuman research. You know that as well as I, I suspect.” She nodded. He frowned. “What about Entropy interests you?” He spoke as if he already knew the answer and dreaded it.

Chase replied, ‘The Radcliffe Incident.’ She finger-spelled the name and watched Professor Dalton wince. ‘She’s our first case of total Entropy.’

“Her death was a great tragedy for Veda,” murmured Professor Dalton. He shook his head and sighed. “I will allow it, Ms. Steele, but I encourage you to rethink your topic. And to be cautious. Ms. Radcliffe’s death is still shrouded in mystery, and Veda City is still reeling, almost a decade after.”

Chase nodded and shifted her bag on her shoulders. ‘I’ll be safe.’

He smiled, but it was small and unsure. “All right. Good luck, then.”

She waved and headed out of the room, meeting up with Zoe, who leaned against the wall just outside the lecture hall.

“What took you so long?” asked Zoe. Her dark skin was smeared with blue medigel, probably from her latest experiment, and her large, black curls were partially tamed by the toque she’d shoved over them.

Chase shrugged, fingers spinning in the air. ‘Talking about my final paper for his class.’

Zoe cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah?” She snagged a granola bar out of her messenger bag and shoved it into her mouth. “What about it?” she asked around a mouthful of granola and chocolate.

Chase rolled her eyes and Zoe’s manners. ‘I want to do it on the Radcliffe Incident.’

Zoe choked. She spat granola into her hand - to which Chase wrinkled her nose - and chucked it into a nearby trash bin, then wiped her hands off on her sweatpants. “Seriously? The most controversial Metahuman blowout in Veda’s _history?_ ” Zoe let out a low whistle. “Ballsy.”

Chase shrugged. ‘We still don’t know what started the final confrontation, nor Radcliffe’s time of death. I think it could be interesting.’

With a sigh, Zoe folded her arms behind her hand and nodded, staring at the ceiling. “Yeah, yeah. All right. Come on.” She reached out and tapped Chase on the shoulder. Let’s hit up my lab. I wanna show you something weird.”

‘Weird?’ asked Chase, furrowing her brow.

“I’ll explain on the way,” said Zoe. “But like… something big happened north of us this morning, dude. Whole diner went up in an explosion, and there’s three bodies.” Zoe looked at Chase, her mouth crooked and unreadable. “They think it’s an Alpha.”

Chase’s jaw dropped. ‘No.’

“Yeah.”

Chase grabbed Zoe’s hand and dragged her forward. Together, they broke into a run.

Holy shit. An _Alpha._ And outside the city? That meant a Prime, because there’d been no Alpha news in the last year, at least. And an explosion?

What the hell did that mean?

* * *

**Nat Carter**

_Nine Days Ago_

“Stand down, Carter. No one has to get hurt.” The voice of Madden rang clear and loud, despite the thunder and rain that echoed and splattered all around them. “Come with us and we’ll go easy on your allies.”

Nat narrowed their eyes. “They have nothing to do with this.” The lies fell from their lips fluidly. Splattering into existence like the rain that slicked their hair and soaked through their boots. The waterproofing wasn’t working. Zoe wouldn’t be happy about that. She’d worked hard on it.

The smell of garbage and smoke thickened the air until Nat struggled to suck in breaths through their nose. It settled a weight in their chest that pushed what little control they had from their bones. The lightning stirred in their blood, but refused to surface. It, like them, was scared.

Nat swallowed hard. Let out a slow breath.

“They didn’t know,” said Nat, voice firmer. “It was just me.”

Madden scoffed. “I might believe that.” The barrel of his gun starred Nat down. They pressed their lips together as the gun shifted. Madden’s finger wasn’t on the trigger.

He wouldn’t shoot. Not yet.

Behind them, Nat felt the tension in their companions. Giovanni, his fingers no-doubt trembling as the rain soaked through his white button-down and turned him from sleek philanthropist into drowned cat. Derek, flickering in and out of existence, the sensation like an automatic door opening at the base of Nat’s spine. Liesel, no doubt still beautiful despite the rain. Better than Nat in every conceivable way.

And now Nat had gotten what they wanted. She was laid low by her hubris. By her ambition. And Nat was the one who held the key to her salvation.

It would have been poetic, if not for the fear that pumped through Nat’s veins. Fear that Madden would shoot.

Fear that Nat wouldn’t be the one with a bullet in their bones.

Pain? Pain was easy. But loss was something else. Something terrifying and dangerous that threatened to rip Nat apart and leave them standing alone in the rain, soaked to the core with the weight of their sins. Painted in the blood of innocents as it fell from the sky alongside the torrential rain.

“It depends,” Madden said, his words echoing. It might have been a second since he last spoke. It might have been ten minutes. Time didn’t exist in the alleyway. The sounds of the city drowned out. “On whether or not my partner agrees.”

Nat frowned. _Partner?_ They’d never seen anyone working with Madden. MERCY had plenty of other operatives. But a partner?

And then, from the shadows, came Chase, and Nat’s heart fell from their chest and hit the muddy puddles beneath their feet.

“ _No_ ,” they breathed, tears prickling their eyes and blurring their vision. They shook their head. Blinked hard. The rain hid their tears. Thank fuck. “No, no. You’re not--” Chase starred, silent as always. From endearing and comforting to horrifying and deceitful in one instance.

Their stomach roiled. Derek gasped. Liesel cursed.

“You _bitch,”_ hissed Nat, their voice rising to a shout. It echoed against the thunder. Above, the lightning flashed. “You were supposed to be--” Nat cut themself off. Lightning crackled against their fingers. Its heat soothed the open wounds of their body, cauterizing their heart, broken, bloody, and torn as it was.

The calm threatened to sweep them. The dark shadows that clung to their skin and allowed them to paint their face in shades of sticky red. To taste ash and ozone. To smell the crisp, metal scent of the air, just before lightning struck.

Nat didn’t let it take them. Or maybe their heart didn’t. The calm receded. The anger took hold. The pain, the fear, the heartbreak, threatened to overwhelm.

Nat blinked away more tears and pretended they didn’t fall.

“How could you?” asked Nat, their voice cracking until it turned hoarse and near-silent.

Chase didn’t meet their gaze. Her fingers twitched, high and clear enough for all of them to read.

‘Carter worked alone. No one else knew what they were.’

She finger-spelled ‘Carter’. Nat swallowed. The lump in their throat moved to their stomach, splashing acid into their lungs and leaving them choking on the inside.

“You can all go,” said Madden, and he was smiling. It was cruel. It was kind. It was nothing. It was everything. “I’ll be in touch. I’m sure Miss Steele has your numbers.” The words danced at the edge of mocking.

More lightning. It burnt its anger into Nat’s skin, crackling their clothes until their jacket started to smoke and sear. Above, the sky echoed their rage. The taste of ozone hung thick in the air, painting Nat’s tongue and cheeks until nothing else remained.

“Nat--,” started Derek, cut off by Liesel’s hand on his shoulder, visible from the corner of Nat’s eye. They didn’t react to the two as they circled around Nat and left. Didn’t react when Derek looked over his shoulder, fear and betrayal in his eyes and dragging down his mouth. Didn’t flinch when Liesel scowled and glared at Nat and Chase both, like she wasn’t sure who to blame.

Nat, for dragging her into this mess? For pulling her into politics that they, themself, only barely understood? For putting their lives at the whims of a trickster god who couldn’t be reasoned with on his best days?

For trying to do what was right, no matter the cost?

Or Chase, for selling them to the law, for putting them back in safety’s clutches, for removing the possibility of a pipe dream before it could kill them all?

Nat didn’t flinch. But it was a near thing. Their heart wept beneath its oozing, burnt wounds, spewing tears that flooded their lungs and left them breathless as they stared down a man, a gun, and a woman they’d thought was everything.

Giovanni didn’t leave. He stepped forward, but he didn’t leave. Nat watched, realization and horror dawning in unison. Two steps in front of Nat; one arm raised, thrown in front of Nat as if it would stop a bullet. Nat could only make out half of his expression. A scowl with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow, pursed lips. The night threw his face into harsh shadow, every part of him oil slick from the thick, hot rain.

Nat shivered despite the heat. Lightning crackled but wouldn’t hold. It danced from finger to finger before vanishing. The lightning above was more consistent, even as it leapt from cloud to cloud, dancing toward and away from Nat in alternating strobes.

“Don’t touch them.” Giovanni’s words echoed in the alleyway, as loud and firm as Madden’s own. “They’re innocent in all of this. Nat was only trying to help our city.” Giovanni spread his hands. “Ben, if you knew what was out there, what they’ve shown me--”

Madden snarled. “Lies! All of it. I’ve seen some of it and Carter is insane. Entropy is swallowing them whole and you can’t accept it, Gio. Look at them,” he jerked his chin toward Nat, a sneer barely visible in the darkness, “they can barely hold their power. How long before we have another Radcliffe on our hands?”

Giovanni flinched, entire body jerking from the motion. Tears or rain. Nat couldn’t tell. The fight went out of him, shoulders slumping and breath leaving him in a massive shudder.

“Madden.” A croak. A defeated sigh. A cleared throat that didn’t take even the edge off his hoarse tone. “This isn’t like you.”

Was it? Nat couldn’t tell. They couldn’t look at Madden anymore. Not with the way he spoke. His words echoed in their head. _Entropy._ They knew that word. Knew that phenomenon. Chase had explained it to them, before.

Was that really all this was? The power outages. The strange feelings. The way everything seemed to flex and flow beneath their fingertips, only to vanish a moment later.

The hunger. The anger. The fear.

The way their world slid like grains of sand between their fingertips, leaving only impressions, fragments, behind.

Was it all Entropy?

Nat stared at Chase, hands falling to their sides as Madden and Giovanni shouted at one another. They couldn’t hear the men’s words over the roaring in their ears that sounded suspiciously like thunder. Chase stared back at Nat, but despite the level gaze, her eyes were empty. Where was the passion? The love? The light that Nat had come to adore?

Where was the fear? The pain?

The regret?

_Where is he?_

Did she really feel nothing? Staring down Nat, who would never see light again, if they went with Madden? Presuming he didn’t shoot them, of course. It would be easy enough. Shoot the Meta, claim it had all been a mistake. Claim that Nat had attacked him. But, if Nat was suffering Entropy, then killing them would be the worst option. Killing them would wipe out a chunk of the city.

How much, Nat didn’t know. But they didn’t know much of anything, anymore.

It was almost tempting, to step in front of the gun. To beg Madden to pull the trigger. Who cared how many people it took out, if it would give Nat peace. Who cared if it would destroy innocent lives, if Nat wouldn’t be around to reap what they sowed.

Who cared about anything?

But no. Nat couldn’t do that. The people around them didn’t deserve to die. The people in these apartments had lives, families, hopes, dreams. They weren’t staring down the blank eyes of someone who had almost been everything to them. They weren’t facing off against an unhinged (or was he?) detective with a gun.

They weren’t hiding behind a man with no power, no weapon, who shouted into the wind.

“Last chance, Carter,” came Madden’s voice, hauling Nat back into the present. Rain thundered. Ozone lingered. Thunder boomed. Lightning flashed. Chase stared. No emotions. No life. Those blue eyes blank and the blonde hair that Nat had held so many times limp around her face.

Nat turned their gaze to him, hands clenched at their sides. Jaw clenched and teeth grinding together.

“Turn yourself in, or I’ll shoot.” Madden’s gaze, hands, and voice were steady. So far from the shouting man only moments ago. Nat didn’t know what the argument had finished on. Nothing good, if Madden still wanted them dead or in custody.

Would the shot even hurt? Could they make it hurt?

Did they want to?

_Yes._

“Nat, no,” said Giovanni, as Nat took a step forward. He placed himself between Nat and Madden, his back to the latter, his arms thrown up in some half-baked attempt to stop them. “You can’t do this.” Tears stained his eyes, turning their deep brown colour into the bottom of a pool. “I’ve seen what they do to people with Entropy. They’ll--” He cut himself off with a voice crack that had Nat dropping their gaze.

Soaked feet. Soaked body. Soaked soul. Dampeners that left their lightning curling in their belly but refusing to come any further.

Rain.

The great equalizer.

“You’re glowing.” Nat froze. The words echoed around their mind but refused to take root. With a shaky exhale, Nat forced their gaze upward, sideways, to the rain-smeared window that had no business existing in this alleyway.

Their freckles, irregular in size and shape, and splattered across their face like flecks of paint off an artist’s brush, glowed a faint, but brilliant, off-blue-white that flickered with every flash of light overhead. Nat stared, a leaden weight in their stomach and their heart hanging between beats.

In a whisper so faint Nat almost didn’t hear, Giovanni whispered, “ _Entropy._ ”

A flinch. Nat jerked back from him, one hand flying to their face and fingers brushing their freckles. _No._

“Enough.” Madden. The words didn’t click.

A flash. A bang.

And, for one brief, beautiful moment, everything hung. Everything was the same. Giovanni kept staring. The rain kept falling. And Nat kept falling.

But they slammed into reality and the world continued.

Giovanni lifted his hand, not to Nat’s face, but to the blooming splotch of red that was staining his shirt, just beneath his ribs.

He croaked. Stumbled. Nat caught him. Blood on their jacket. _Who cares?_

Blood on their hands. Blood everywhere.

“No,” whispered Nat, as Giovanni clutched at their shoulders. He stared at Nat with wide eyes and a wider mouth. “No.”

_Where is he?_

Nat called their lightning, but it didn’t come. In Giovanni’s eyes, Nat saw their reflection. Limp, wet rat with glowing spots on their face.

_Useless._

“Move in.”

Nat stared at Giovanni. He went limp and slid. Nat hit their knees. They tried to hold him up, but he was so heavy.

Dead weight.

No, he couldn’t be. He still had a heartbeat, didn’t he?

Didn’t he?

Nat didn’t know. The part of their mind that let them reach into bodies, to feel nerve firings and heartbeats, was dead. Their heart seemed still in their chest. Surely, it must beat for them to still be alive. But it was dead. Dead and dripping blood out of the gaping hole in their chest where it had been torn out by Madden, by Chase, by Giovanni.

By a gun.

Nat lifted their head. Lightning crackled in the air around them. They let go of Giovanni and stood as their power called itself into an aura.

They screamed and it mixed with the roar of the thunder.

A prick against their neck. Nat jerked, lightning dying. Their hand went to the spot. A dart.

A blow dart?

Why?

More pricks. Against their arms. Their back. Their neck. Dozens upon dozens. Nat stumbled, yanking. None of them pulled free.

The world tipped and blurred. They hit their knees again.

Everything faded out of focus. The shadows crept in. The lightning died in their throat, in their heart, in their stomach. Nothing in their veins but the reluctant pulse of their heart.

Nat stared as Madden and Chase approached. Chase held a slim collar in one hand. Nat fell forward -- hands and knees now.

The collar slipped on and clicked closed. A buzz, a hum, and the connection to the storm was broken.

Zoe’s collars. Transformed and modified for Nat.

How many people were involved in this?

How many friends had betrayed them?

Nat lifted their head, just barely able to make out Chase.

“Why?” they whispered.

_Where is he?_

And Chase only stared, hands still at her sides, as Nat fell forward, smashing into the ground.

And then they were gone.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is only one scene, which isn't super common with me, but this scene is 7,550 words, so I felt it was warranted. This probably won't happen very often, but I'm glad I did it for this chapter.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Theme for this chapter: [Can't Stop Me Now by Oh the Larceny](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL_QlRXzhsQ)

**Nicholai Stavos**

_Nine Months Ago_

_Pink Slip_ . Notorious, obnoxious, and technicolour. Nicki’s fifth least favourite place to visit in Veda, after a few he wouldn’t mention to anyone. A club known for its cocktails, its upper class and sometimes criminal VIPs, and, of course, its DJ: Thad Fabulon, the god forsaken, heathen-raised, _hedonistic_ , jackass of a man that haunted Nicki’s dreams in ways he wasn’t terribly comfortable with on his best days.

And Veda’s own, personal, pied piper.

If given the choice, Nicki would never corner Thad in his personal mosh-pit of sin and synth, but Roan had long since developed a knack for hiding Thad from Nicki’s view when they were alone, and Nicki already had a headache from the last month of his own tremulous existence. So, it was spend hours tracking Thad and snarling at Roan, overprotective little twink that he was, or shove in some concert grade earplugs and go face the devil and his posse of sinners and saints.

Rock, hard place.

 _God,_ he needed a drink.

The worst of it wasn’t the noise, nor the unwelcome, sweaty, and too-close company, nor even his reluctance to drop the vanishing act and stroll in like a normal bloody person, no matter how much he hated being seen. No, the worst part - and Nicki knew he was whining, he knew, but it was the _principle_ of the matter - was that he was going to Thad Fabulon, his own worst nightmare, for _help._

Bloody _fucking_ hell. He needed a tall, stiff drink, and maybe a matching prick to go with it.

Staring at the outside of _Pink Slip_ , hands in his pockets, jacket discarded and tucked into the folds of the Web -- he’d find it later, he always did -- Nicki scowled, both at the club and himself.

Nicki groaned and scrubbed his hands through his hair. It was freshly washed, as if being clean was enough to make this any easier. He’d need to cut it soon - hanging down, it brushed passed his ears, though he always kept it swept back with one hand. The only truly advantage to longer hair was hiding his eyes, but he didn’t much care for that. Better for people to see you for what you were, if they must see you, or so he’d always thought.

“Right then, Nicki,” he muttered to himself, well aware that a man talking to himself wouldn’t be out of place this close to Thad’s club, “let’s get on with it.”

He shoved himself forward, grimacing at the outfit he’d worn to blend in with the club. A skintight black v-neck with equally tight black skinny jeans, tight boots that clung to his ankles, and silver bangles that draped around his neck, his wrists, and his fingers. He’d even bothered with lip gloss - a purple that smelled like artificial grapes and tasted like old wax.

Across the road, through the door - the bouncers couldn’t see him, nor the people in line, he held their threads with a loose hand in his mind, absently plucking them with the same ease as a practiced guitarist or bass player.

Threads were easy. They connected the world -- people, objects, places, memories. Everything. He could dance between them, latch onto the connections, twist them around as they fell into place and restring the people they were attached to as needed.

The harder part was the end points: the people and the objects. If he left himself open, every brush of a person, every touch of an object, even something as simple looking too closely at someone, could send him mind into a tailspin of threads and webs that left him flying down an information superhighway made of the people and places of Veda City.

Damned Web. Always mucking things up when it wasn’t being useful.

Sort of like people, that way.

With a second check that he’d closed himself from unwanted connections, Nicki plunged into the dim and grungy wall of noise that was _Pink Slip._

Club clothes, club noise, club people. Music with a baseline so deep that in burnt into his bones and left only ashes behind. He grimaced, fingers going to the earplugs he wore, wishing they blocked it out.

He scanned the floor - several thousand square feet of undulating bodies, pulsating strobes, face paint and make-up blooming from blacklights, and a black dance floor with panelled tiles that lit up different neon colours every few seconds - and found his target. Perched above them all on a circular stage at the centre of the floor, was Fabulon.

His DJ booth a throne, the nearest dancers his true believers. They twisted and spun around him, hands thrown in the air and delicate necks exposed to the tan, gleaming monster that loomed above them all.

A false God amongst men, claiming worship and idolship from the misguided peasants that devoured his words like gospel. Who traded their bodies, minds, and souls for the opportunity to look upon Fabulon just once. To hear him speak with tainted blood upon his lips.

Nicki was fairly certain that was some kind of grievous sin, but the rules always seemed to change. And, he definitely couldn’t cast too large a stone, considering he hadn’t been to confession in five years, and in those five years, he’d done some of the worst things he’d ever been asked.

All but one, anyway. That had been long ago. Ten years, almost.

Nicki moved through the crowd, his hands in his pockets and his chin held high. He kept his gaze on Fabulon and his booth, on the way he moved and spun with the lights and the music. On his fingers as they danced across the sound boards, twisting the songs and beats into something ethereal and otherworldly.

Thad always reminded him of the fae from childhood tales. Beautiful and impossibly delicate at a glance, but powerful and deadly up close. In both cases of metaphor - devil or fae - one thing held: don’t make bargains, don’t make deals, don’t accept gifts.

Don’t trust anything he says.

You will pay the price.

Nicki bumped into one person, then another, as they danced, and knew he’d entered Thad’s circle of control when the crowd parted around him and the dances perfectly synchronized. He narrowed his eyes, his black gaze meeting Thad’s deep blue. Thad quirked an eyebrow at him, lips twisting into a smile that screamed of danger.

Nicki narrowed his eyes and kept his languid pace, a fragment of his attention lingering on the VIP balconies high above the floor, and the dozens of gazes that clung to his body like a second, unwanted skin. From this distance, in this lighting, they wouldn’t make out his eyes. And, dressed as he was, that was all they could use to identify him.

All anyone knew, watching the crowd part like the Red Sea, was that Nicki was someone important. Someone Thad wanted to make a statement about. Nicki narrowed his eyes further, teeth grinding against one another, and straightened his shoulders.

 _Bastard._ But there was nothing he could do about it now. Instead, he kept up the persona of tough, important person, and made a quick run down of his plans.

Thad leapt from the his booth and pulled a figure in after him. Cheers and gasps went up all around as the figure, a woman in a black mini-dress with Thad’s symbol, a flute over a pair of black eyes emitting endless night and stars, a stream of music winding around them both, half blood, half music, tattooed in the hollow of her throat. A similar charm hung from a necklace that hung in her cleavage, and also in her earrings and the pin in her shining, gold hair.

Her eyes had a slight blue sheen to them, betraying Thad’s direct control, and it faded as he closed the gap between himself and Nicki, until only a blue thread, visible only to Nicki, twisting out of Thad and winding its way up the booth to latch onto the girl’s brain through her eyes, remained to mark the difference.

“Chosen, chosen,” whispered the people outside the silent, parted crowd. “Chosen.” The whispers shouldn’t have carried, not with the sound of the club, but the laws of sound didn’t obey inside the _Pink Slip’s_ walls. The only laws that worked were the ones Thad made for himself.

“Stavos,” murmured Thad, his words tickling Nicki’s jaw and settling in his ears, even before Thad reached him. The voice was low, devoid of all personality, of inflection. Almost generic.

And not at all Thad’s.

Thad continued, “Such a pleasant surprise.” He raised an eyebrow. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Nicki tilted his head toward the back room that only Thad, Roan, and whoever they’d borrowed for the night, were allowed within.

Thad hummed, a twinkle in his eye that ignited blue sparks in the crowd around them, and struck off toward the room without another word. With a roll of his eyes, Nicki followed him, reaching out to pluck the threads of Thad’s uncontrolled bunch. Those under his spell mostly likely wouldn’t remember this night, so Nicki ignored them, but he took the time to strike the thread of his arrival in the club from the tapestry of memory that the rest of the patrons possessed.

Damned Fabulon, making him do all the work.

The wave of control ebbed and flowed with Thad’s movements, twisting unique dances into uniformity before allowing them back to their personal touches. People blinked when Thad passed, the shadows crossing and fading from their gazes in the span of a few seconds. Nicki would have felt sorry for them, if they hadn’t chosen their fates willingly.

Anyone who came into _Pink Slip_ knew what they were asking for, himself included.

Thad had long since given up trying to control Nicki, most likely out of frustration that it didn’t work, rather than _actually_ because it didn’t work - Thad hated being wrong, or stopped, or humiliated, something Nicki took a great deal of joy from - but Thad’s apostles, twelve in all, were often powerful Metas -- Metas Thad didn’t _need_ to control, for their loyalty was so ironclad -- in their own right, even if Nicki didn’t recognize most that watched from the wall nearest the bar.

Except for three.

Thad’s Wise Men, as people called them, though only one was a man: Freya, the Beta shapeshifter who had an ear for gossip and intel like Nicki had never seen before; Theone, a Beta glass manipulator who ran the underground racing and fighting rings; and Fiyero Monasterio, the pyrokinetic, and the third ranked Alpha in all of Veda. That had been a mistake, on Nicki’s part, putting Monasterio within Thad’s reach, but he’d made many mistakes, in those first years on his own.

Five years after the fact, he was much more capable, or so he liked to think, anyway.

“So,” drawled Thad, the Northern Canadian accent twinging his voice. It was, Nicki thought, partially the reason that Roan did a lot of the talking. Thad, when he wasn’t thinking, sounded like a _hick._ Hardly intimidating or fit for worship. Though, Texas based cults would have argued that bit.

Nicki quirked an eyebrow, unable to stop the crooked smile that wiped away his annoyance.

Thad scowled, but his expression was quickly replaced by something more playful, more intimidating. His eyes ignited, blue washing away blue, before fading back to normal.

“I’ll ask again, what brings you to my worship?” he asked. His words, now, sounded almost regal for a Canadian, his voice clear and cool. The drawl was gone, his voice replaced by another that held the same timbre, but none of his lower class upbringing.

Nicki wondered who he’d stolen that voice from.

“You would call it a worship.” Nicki snorted, his arms folded across his chest. He looked Thad up and down, watching the threads spin out around him. Like ink, the blue spread out in tendrils, winding its way through the room and around Nicki before disappearing through the door. Those tendrils were latched, in the club beyond, into the brains of dozens, if not hundreds, of his loyal followers.

He’d asked, once, why people would give up their minds and bodies for this. Thad had told him, simply, that they wanted an escape. That he could provide healing and peace.

Once, Nicki had believed that.

Once.

“Only on Fridays.” Thad glanced over Nicki’s shoulder and the door opened. The dim noise of the club became a roar and Nicki fought to hold himself still, to keep from cringing away from the wall of sound. The door closed. A young man came around Nicki, Thad’s mark tattooed in the same place as the woman’s, carrying a drink tray. He handed a cocktail to Thad and offered the tray to Nicki. It held rum and coke, by the smell.

Nicki took it and frowned, watching the boy go. When the door clicked shut once more, leaving the room in, not silence, but a comfortable quiet, Nicki returned his attention to Thad, who sipped his bellini languidly, his fingers stroking the beading condensation on the glass.

Running his thumb against the glass, Nicki allowed the connections to open. The glass, put upon the tray by the boy, took him back to the bar, where the alcohol poured into it. The bartender touched the glass, rewinding Nicki even further, to the bartender in the storage room. A touch of the floor and Nicki’s mind raced against it, darting under the secure, outside door, which took him to the alleyway where Thad’s thugs, free in mind but not in soul, often smoked and grumbled to one another.

And _there_. Reapers.

Well. _That_ was new, but not wholly unexpected.

The joys of taking the shortcuts in his work.

“Tell me,” said Nicki, barely a second later, when his mind fully returned. He sipped his drink. Stronger than he expected, but acceptable. Thad probably wanted him drunk, but it would take quite a bit more than one drink to manage that. The only shortcut to that was drugging it, but his quick glimpse at the bar had proven it wasn’t tampered with. “Where’s Roan, tonight?”

Thad shrugged, but a slight scowl tugged at his features. He’d guessed what Nicki now saw -- gold and silver threads pooled around Thad, flushing out his connections to his apostles, his thugs, and the physical world that he couldn’t control like his worshippers. Roan was out of range, or else, otherwise occupied.

With that in mind, Nicki reached out, holding the blue threads in his mind’s hand that were closest to him. He pulled them as tight as he could, winding them along the gold and silver threads until the blues pulsed and flickered. Sweat beaded on Thad’s forehead.

Nicki only smiled.

“Do you think I keep fucking tabs on him?” asked Thad, a bitter edge twisting his words until they echoed in the small space. It was a small space, this back room, though Nicki knew from experience that this was only its front. A long table, lined with weapons and tablets, was at Thad’s back, and, around them, plush chairs watched the table. A TV hung from the ceiling, sleek and new. Last time Nicki had visited, the old TV had fallen and shattered due to… extenuating circumstances.

It was good to see that Thad had replaced it in their months apart.

Nicki fought a smile and hid what he couldn’t fight in his glass as he sipped again. He must have interrupted a rather powerful gospel, for Thad to be so wound up once they were alone. Or perhaps it was something else, a danger Thad hadn’t expected, a mistake he hadn’t accounted for, or, perhaps, something else.

Something more personal.

Nicki hummed, trying not to look interested as he circled Thad and dropped himself into one of the plush armchairs. He leaned back in it, kicking his feet up onto the table, his arms draped over the sides of the chair and his head tilted back to stare at Thad. He swirled his drink, dangling it in his fingers.

“Trouble in paradise?” asked Nicki, letting the full force of his accent ooze into his words. Thad shivered, barely there, but noticeable all the same.

Thad dropped into the chair next to Nicki, spinning it so that he faced Nicki and Nicki mostly faced the table.

“Not unless you’re causing it, _mate_ ,” he growled out. This was Nicki’s favourite part, twisting Thad up until he was so tight he couldn’t breathe. It would pass, for it always did, and Thad would return to his usual self, once he stopped feeling the strain on his mind. But for now, oh, the cat and mouse game was so, so refreshing.

And relieved some of the tension that Nicki always felt when Thad was around.

“Now, now, you know my interest isn’t in Roan.” Nicki’s voice was a languid drawl and he lifted his free hand, swirling his fingers in the air as he played with the threads. Thad squinted, sweat gathering on the tip of his nose. He stared at Nicki and Nicki stared back. Two hurricanes racing toward one another.

Nicki’s faded first. The threads snapped taunt, jerking from Nicki’s grasp, before dropping to the floor and returning to their pulsating paths. Nicki scowled.

Each time, Thad got faster. One day, Nicki wouldn’t be able to grab them at all.

“I would,” said Nicki. At Thad’s blink, Nicki continued. “Keep tabs on him, I mean. He’s quite the charmer.”

Thad snorted. “Not charming enough for you.” He leaned forward, arms draped over his knees and drink held aloft with two fingers. “Fucking Stavos, always making assumptions.”

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth, Fabulous?” asked Nicki. He downed the rest of his drink and set the glass on the table. A quirked eyebrow at Thad elicited another snort.

“Not lately.” Thad sipped his drink, chugged the rest, and slammed it down on the table hard enough to rattle several of the guns and knives. Nicki still wasn’t sure how he felt about all the weaponry just laying about in this room. Though, he supposed thieves weren’t exactly common in this club. “And it’s Fabulon, not Fabulous. Or fucking Thad, if you have to.” Thad bared his teeth.

The voice dropped back to the hick and the rough edges showed. The demon in sheepskin revealed. The learned charm peeled away to showcase the rough, bare-knuckle fighter that Nicki had once adored. A man who wasn’t above blood in his teeth, dirt in his hair, and someone else’s skin and bones under his fingernails.

Thad no longer did his own dirty work. Hadn’t in half a decade.

And it was, in Nicki’s opinion, the greatest tragedy of this damned cult.

“Touchy, touchy,” murmured Nicki, steepling his fingers in front of his face, his elbows propped up on the arms of the chair. “ _Someone_ isn’t getting his morning nookie.” His lips quirked, amusement dancing across his expression and darkly reflected in the annoyance in Thad’s squinting scowl. “ _Love_ ,” he added, belatedly, just because he could.

 _“Stavos.”_ The warning was clear. If Nicki’d been anyone else, he might have worried. But what was Thad going to do, stab him? Certainly, there were enough knives, or even guns, in this room to do some damage, but it wouldn’t come to that. Nicki was useful to Thad, and Thad, likewise, to him.

Both of them would be fine, no matter the words they shared.

Damaging the goods wasn’t a practice any businessman should dabble in, after all.

Now, the worshippers outside the room. Well…

They were another story entirely.

“So,” said Nicki, switching gears. “Reapers? That’s new.”

Thad narrowed his eyes. “Still up to that old trick, eh?” He shook his head. “Freak.”

Nicki shrugged. He’d been called worse.

Thad stabbed a finger at him. “You don’t need to worry about that. The Reapers and I have reached an understanding.”

A hum. “Interesting.” Nicki dropped his legs to the floor and folded one over the other at the knee. “I seem to recall many a fight between the two of us and them at the peak of our partnership, _Thad._ ” Thad twitched. “Interesting that you’d come to such an… _understanding_ , especially now. What with…” He trailed off, eyes twinkling. “All the new circumstances.”

Thad’s eyes narrowed. “What new circumstances?”

_Gotcha._

Nicki clasped his hands together and held them on his knee. “Perhaps we can make a deal. You need information, after all, if you’re so far behind on the up and up.”

“If Vixen hasn’t heard anything--” started Thad.

 _Vixen._ Freya.

Nicki frowned. “You still don’t call them by name, do you?”

Twelve apostles. Twelve names. Vixen was Freya. Fiyero had once been Ignition, though Nicki believed that had changed since he’d last seen seen the man. He didn’t remember Theone’s and couldn’t guess as to what the other nine might have been, as he hadn’t a clue who they were. But he remembered _their_ names.

Ghost. Pied Piper. The names they’d taken in what seemed, now, like another life. Thad had kept his, of course, and Nicki… Well. It depended on the day. But it was still what the public called him, alongside “the invisible man”.

Nicki preferred “Ghost” of the two, and not just because he only liked “man” half the time.

“Those are their names,” Thad replied, voice tight and smooth at once. “How do I know you aren’t lying?”

Nicki spread his hands. “The same way you knew in the past, my dear _friend_.”

Thad growled. “Fucking Alphas.”

“Not an Alpha.” Nicki tipped his head a bit as he spoke.

Thad rolled his eyes. “You sure as hell aren’t a fucking Beta.” The implication hung in the air: not a Beta like _me._ When the ranking lists were released every year for the Alphas and Betas -- the five total Alphas in Veda City and the top 50 Betas --Thad always stood atop the Beta list. He had for as long as Nicki had known him.

If Nicki was a Beta, Thad had argued over and over, then why wasn’t he atop the list as well?

Nicki’s argument, that if he was an Alpha, why wasn’t he on _that_ list instead, never got a clear response. A double standard, or a flaw in the logic. He could never be sure with Thad. Rules only worked when Thad wanted them to. Only were logical if it was absolutely necessary.

When you controlled the people, you controlled the rules.

Nicki had never much liked that. Some rules of existence could not be changed, only worked around.

“If you are telling the truth,” said Thad with narrowed eyes, “then what the hell do you want?”

Nicki sighed. This was the part he’d dreaded most. He dropped both feet so they were flat on the floor and mirrored Thad’s pose -- leaned forward, arms on his knees -- but softened it with slumped shoulders and pressed together lips.

“I need a favour.”

Thad stared at Nicki for a few long, horrendous seconds. His eyes widened, his eyebrows shot up, and his mouth dropped open in quick succession.

“What.”

Not a question. A flat statement of shock was more accurate. Thad kept staring, as if he expected Nicki to suddenly shout “gotcha!” and laugh. When Nicki didn’t -- in truth, he started fidgeting and grimaced -- he leaned back in his chair as if the air had been wiped from his lungs.

“You know, I never used to dread hearing that,” said Thad. He narrowed his eyes at Nicki. “What’s this intel, if you think it’s good enough to warrant a favour from my parish?” He gestured to the room around him, as if his believers and apostles stood behind him. Nicki narrowed his eyes, scanning for the tell-tale threads of a person -- just in case he’d missed one -- and found nothing.

Figure of speak. Or else Thad was going absolutely bonkers. Or maybe… but no. He was a Beta. Betas didn’t succumb to Entropy. Not quickly. Not at this age.

Not usually.

Nicki spread his hands, almost a shrug, almost an apology. _Almost._ “Come now, Thad, you know I’m not here for your _parish_ .” Oh, how he loathed calling it that. But, if Gertrude had taught him anything, it was that the best way to communicate with someone was to use their language, no matter how strange it might seem. “I’m here for _you._ ”

Thad raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

With a sigh, Nicki clasped his hands together and leaned forward. “All right, mate, I’ll level with you. A new citizen is coming to Veda.”

A snort. “And you think I care?”

Nicki hummed and tilted his head from side to side. “Maybe, maybe not. But I think their status would pique your interest,” he replied. Thad narrowed his eyes. Nicki smiled, but it was a cruel thing, with cold clarity in his gaze that he knew Thad saw, if only by the way Thad leaned back. “It’s past time for Veda to gain a new Alpha, don’t you think?”

Thad went slack-jawed, his gaze growing wide and his mouth falling open. He said nothing, merely gaping like a fish, and Nicki let his smile spread, let the cruelty ooze into his words, his gestures.

“Don’t you think _that_ might warrant a looksie?” asked Nicki, raising both eyebrows.

Thad visibly ground his teeth together, working the back of his jaw around like he was trying to break teeth.

“What’s the favour?”

Thread spiralled around Thad: connections he was remembering or were becoming relevant. With a fraction of his mind, Nicki leapt upon the closest and chased it around, settling in his chair with the rest of his consciousness.

The thread leapt from the room and spiralled toward the twisting, glass staircase in the corner of the club and --

 _Shit._ The thread went taunt and Nicki’s fragmented consciousness crumbled back together in the chair.

Roan. And he was on his way to the back room.

“I need to borrow Monasterio for… information gathering, let’s say.” Nicki leaned against the back of the chair, holding the anxiety that skittered up his spine. Once Roan arrived, his connection to Thad would close. Not to mention, the little prick would want to know everything going on.

Right bastard, that brat.

“He’ll tell me whatever you learn, even if you hide it from me now,” said Thad. Then, with suspicion etching across his face in a furrowed brow and pursed lips, “If he’s capable, anyway.”

“If he’s capable,” agreed Nicki, “but you and I both know I’d never hurt an innocent man.”

Thad snorted. “And we both know you don’t consider my apostles innocent.”

Nicki didn’t reply, not with words anyway. Instead, he simply tipped his head to one side and hummed.

With a deep breath, Nicki dropped the hammer. "Come on, _Thaddeus_.” Thad bristled at his full name being pulled taunt over one of Nicki’s more sultry pitches. “You and I both know I can do this with or without you.” Nicki reached up and tapped his index finger against his lips before dragging it down to linger on his chin. He looked at Thad with lidded eyse. “Wouldn't you rather be on the inside of this one?"

For a long, painful moment, neither one spoke. They stared at one another. Nicki, sultry. Thad, torn and confused. A deer in the headlights.

Thad cleared his throat, shattering the silence, and _growled._

“Don’t fucking pull that shit on me you little _punk_ .” Oops. He’d botched that one, then. “And don’t try and kid either of us, _Nicholai._ ” Yup, definitely botched. Nicki winced. “You may be able to do this one on your own, but you wouldn’t be here if you stood any chance.” Thad levelled an angry look at Nicki. “You’re good. Or,” Thad snorted, “you were when we ran together.”

Nicki looked away, pressing his lips into a thin line. His hold on his shields cracked and flaked away, revealing histories within the room. Images -- Thad bending Roan over this chair, a gun being fired. Blood, everywhere -- and threads tore themselves into his mind, leaving being fractured worlds and webs that he couldn’t latch on to.

Thad kept speaking and Nicki used his words to haul himself out of the abyss that loomed beneath his control, trying to swallow him whole.

“Your power doesn’t allow you to string someone up on marionette wires and make them dance for you. That’s my job.” Thad’s words echoed as Nicki resettled himself in his own body. He forced himself not to shake out the inky residue of his near-fall.

A fall and a fold in the Web were two separate things. A fold was easy -- vanish, body, mind, and soul into the Web. Reappear elsewhere. A fall took your mind and not your body. Left you a zombie if it didn’t kill you outright.

Nicki rubbed at his eyes and his fingers came away stained in black. He hid his hands by pressing them between his thighs, hoping nothing else was blackened from the slip-up.

“No, you’re right about that much,” said Nicki, after too long a pause. Thad watched him with a look of curiosity and suspicion that had all the alarm bells in Nicki’s head going off. _Run_ , they said.

 _Not yet_ , he told them, even as they continued to ring. _Not yet._

“Though I have my ways, old-fashioned as they might seem.” He let the drawl slip back into his words to hide the tremor that clung to his voice. Kept his fingers squeezed between his thighs to hide the identical tremor in his hands.

“And what would those be?”

Nicki grinned, his heart not in it, and said, “Shoot at their feet.”

Thad let out a sharp, harsh bark of laughter and slapped one of his knees. “Fuckin’ eh, yeah? Just like you to take that route.” Still chuckling, he shook his head, a grin curling against his features.

A knock at the door. Thad and Nicki both tensed, though Nicki suspected it was for very different reasons.

Knowledge versus a lack thereof.

“Yeah?” called Thad.

The door opened. Roan appeared.

And all the threads in the room vanished at once, leaving only the inky blue that connected Thad to his minions behind.

Roan was… exactly as Nicki had clocked him, two years ago when they’d first crossed paths. A spindly man five inches shorter than Thad, with soft, brown eyes that did nothing to betray the darkness within. He dyed his black hair into a washed-out red that leaned toward pale umber, and his Korean heritage have graced him with olive skin and a smooth complexion.

If Nicki didn’t know better, he’d call Roan a hipster, maybe an art student. He’d watched Roan from a distance quite a bit and knew his usual attire to be oversized, black-rimmed glasses, bagging button-up sweaters that hung to his knees, leggings, and band t-shirts. But staring at him now, Nicki could almost believe, without the prior knowledge that he held, that Roan was every bit the monster he must have been for Thad to love him.

Mesh black shirt with a one-shouldered baby blue crop top over top, tight, black leather pants that left little to the imagination and betrayed his use of a dancer’s belt, knee high, heeled boots with too many zippers, acrylic nails painted the same shade of blue as Thad’s eyes and tipped in a shade of red reminiscent of dried blood.

Or maybe it was dried blood.

Add in the lack of glasses, the slicked back hair, the deep red lipstick, and the bling that decorated the massive, pale expanses of his skin, and Roan almost looked like he belonged. Almost looked like a monster.

Mostly, though…

“Well, don’t you look like a two-bit whore.” Nicki snorted as he spoke and took more than a little pleasure in the scowl that ripped across Roan’s serene face. The man, boy, _whatever_ \-- five years Thad’s fucking junior, a year passed legal when they’d started dating. Nicki wasn’t bitter. No, not fucking _bitter_ at all. It wasn’t as if he still had a bloody claim over Thad, anyway. -- circled Nicki and perched himself on the arm of Thad’s chair, his body slanted so that his hip peaked over from his pants, angled toward Thad.

Thad grinned.

“Darlin’,” he said, not bothering to hide his accent. “What brings you here?”

Roan offered a smile to Thad before turning his gaze back to Nicki and scowling. Nicki waggled his fingers at him.

“Grey is in VIP. He’d like to speak with you.”

Nicki bristled. _Grey._ Motherfucker.

“Senior or junior?” asked Thad, his own gaze sliding to Nicki. Something danced in his eyes, something that Nicki couldn’t place. Something he didn’t trust.

It was a stupid question. But one Thad had asked anyway.

Why? For Nicki’s benefit? But no. The answer was easy enough to guess.

“Senior,” said Roan. He flicked his head, as if tossing hair he thought he had. But Roan had never had long hair. Not as far as Nicki knew. “Since when does junior do anything other than braid flower crowns and write poetry?” He snorted, tossing his head again in a short of shrug.

Nicki chuckled, shaking his head. Roan levelled a flat look at him, his jaw tightening.

“Something funny, _Stavos?_ ” The sharpness to Roan’s voice meant little. He was too much of a bloody coward to try anything. Especially so if Thad didn’t give the go-ahead first.

Then again, Thad hadn’t used to bend so easily to the whims of a good fuck. Roan was a pain in the bloody arse, but he had Thad wrapped around his delicate and manicured little fingers. Something to remember. And something that would bite Nicki in the ass if he didn’t keep it in mind.

“Nah,” said Nicki, shaking his head and pursing his lips. “Not really. Just that you usually look like you’d fit right in with that sort of thing.” He jutted his chin out at Roan and cocked an eyebrow.

Roan pouted. It was probably supposed to be intimidating, but mostly he just looked like a kicked puppy. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

Nicki let his gaze slide all the way down Roan, then all the way back up. Slowly, mockingly, and with no small amount of disdain and sexual tension in every inch of his expression and body.

“You don’t say.” His words were flat. Roan sneered, maybe a snarl. Nicki didn’t really care. He turned his attention back to Thad. A dismissal if he’d ever given one. He could almost _feel_ the indignance and rage bleeding from Roan.

He wanted to say he didn’t care. But he did. It was a _glorious_ thing to feel oozing off such a little prick.

Probably _had_ a little prick, too.

Not that that mattered much, given the way Roan pranced about for Thad. Nicki doubted he’d ever had much use for it other than a quick squeeze at the end of a tight, whiny pound that probably involved a lot of overdone moans and more prep than either of them had ever needed.

Fucking mingy little bastard.

“Grey, huh?” asked Nicki, quirking an eyebrow. He was getting rather good at that. “You really have bunked up with the Reapers, then.” He leaned forward and steepled his hands together in front of his face. “You know, she never approved of them.”

“She didn’t,” agreed Thad, with a nod. “But times change, Nicki, and I have need for their… services.” The weight to that word had Nicki scowling.

“You’re having them do your dirty work,” said Nicki, flatly. It shouldn’t have surprised him. The Reapers were Veda’s own version of a bloody mafia. Of course Thad working with them meant they were doing the grunt work.

He’d pay for that, later. You always paid for the Reapers. Whether you knew it or not. Whether they asked first or not.

“Why?” asked Thad, raising both eyebrows, something sly in his expression. “Does it bother you? That I’m on better terms with them than you are?”

Nicki bristled, but didn’t let it show. He schooled his expression into something approaching neutral and replied with a cool voice. “Not at all. I simply like to know what I’m dealing with.” He made a show of straightening and tugging his shirt down into place, as if nothing bothered him. “I wonder though, do you ever miss it?”

Thad cocked his head in question.

“Doing your own dirty work,” supplied Nicki. “Do you miss it?”

Thad shook his head, jutting out his lower lip. “Not at all,” he said, voice easy. “Do ever miss having clean hands.”

Nicki’s mouth quirked up on one side. “My hands were dirty long before we were involved, Thad, I assure you.” He looked at the digital clock on the wall behind Thad, though he knew the time even without it, and continued with, “I suppose I should let you get to entertaining, shouldn’t I?” He stood and strode around his chair, standing where he’d first arrived in the room. “I do hope you consider my proposal, though. It would benefit us both.”

Thad stood and nodded. “I’ll think about it.” He held out his hand and Nicki grasped it, shaking twice. No threads. No memories. Nothing. Roan had him locked down entirely.

_Mingy little prick._

Thad held fast to Nicki’s hand and Nicki tensed, waiting.

“You should have followed me out, Nicholai, when you had the chance.” He spoke plainly, if with a slight hint of longing. “We could have been equals. You could have become a _God._ ”

Nicki shook his head. “I’d rather be human, thank you.”

“Weak, you mean,” replied Thad, releasing Nicki’s hand.

With a shrug, Nicki offered Thad a small smile. The old argument circled around in his mind, but he felt no rage, no frustration. Mostly, he felt tired. Thad didn’t know what it meant to be vulnerable, to be weak. To be human.

But then again, did Nicki? It was hard to say. It had been so long since he’d concerned himself with such things.

Human or God; God or human? Both were out of reach. Impossible dreams. One over the other hardly mattered, in the grand scheme of things. But the distinction was important to him.

Humans died like anyone else.

Gods were struck down when they failed. And false gods faced a wrath far greater than anything this city could throw at them.

“Perhaps,” agreed Nicki, nodding. “Or, perhaps, I’d rather feel my emotions through my own filters, rather than those of a thousand others.”

It was low, and he knew that. Knew it by the bitter taste on his lips and the scowl that crossed Thad’s expression.

“I don’t understand you anymore.” Thad’s words were annoyed, but also soft, as if he were sad about the fact.

Nicki gathered himself and opened the door. The wall of noise plastered itself to his body. “The feeling is quite mutual, I assure you. Thank you for the drink.” With that said, he struck off into the club, his head down and his hands in his pockets.

Halfway across, he felt, rather than saw, Thad disappear into the crowd as well and knew he was headed toward the VIP section and toward Lucius Grey, the godfather of the Reapers.

Threads tangled around him and Nicki looked up to see men in black circling toward him. A quick twist through their webs and he had their reasons: they wanted him. Roan had sent them. Nicki scowled and reached out with his mind, burning the threads from their minds and tangling new ones to the bar. The man swivelled and left.

Stupid child, to forget to shield them. Or, perhaps they were out of reach.

Filled with rage, Nicki fractured his psyche and split himself in two, folding the angrier half into the Web and unfolding in the back room, where Roan still sat.

Roan jumped when Nicki appeared, his head swivelling to the TV screen, which showed Nicki still moving through the crowd. Nicki felt that part of him, saw that part of him through his own eyes, but paid it no mind. He could split himself easily enough. This? This was the more interesting piece.

“Do not test me _child_ ,” growled Nicki, stepping into Roan’s personal space. Roan took a step back, eyes narrowed as he tried to hide his threads. It didn’t matter. Nicki was already here.

Then, Roan’s eyes grew wide when he realized he couldn’t shut himself away. The threads hung there, scattered in midair, and Nicki reached out and ran the back of his hand over Roan’s cheek.

Roan shuddered.

“You’re… you’re actually here,” Roan whispered, horror thick in his squeaky voice. “You’re not just a projection.” He dared to look at the TV and Nicki allowed it. “You… you must have multiple powers.”

A sly, crooked smile spread across Nicki’s face and he leaned closer, almost nose to nose with Roan, then veered off so his teeth were against Roan’s ear.

“Try again, _gae_ ,” he whispered. Roan yelped and stumbled back, his hands slamming back into the table. The guns and knives rattled all around them. Nicki was tempted, so very tempted, to pick one up and shoot Roan in the chest five or six times.

It wasn’t worth it. Not for the retribution he’d face from Thad, his fools, and now, the Reapers.

Before he could do anything stupid, Nicki folded himself again and disappeared, returning that fraction of his mind back to himself just as he stepped from the club back onto the street.

Once passed the noise and tucked into the wide alleyway beside the club, he paused and took a deep breath, collecting his mind from the tendrils he’d sent out along the Web. With his eyes closed, he could faintly hear the club, the baseline pounding into the streets, and also smell the bitter scent of sorrow and loss in the air.

“It’s pathetic, how easily you turn to others.” At the soft, feminine voice, Nicki’s eyes flew open. He spun around to find its owner. She leaned against the outside of the club, one eyebrow raised and a sly twist to her lips that barely moved her otherwise flat expression. “Did she truly teach you nothing?”

Nicki’s hands clenched at his sides. No threads twisted away from her. No images came when he looked into her eyes - eyes as dark and black as his own, but with spindly arms that came off the black and cut through the white, as if they were slowly being absorbed by the night.

“You’re not real.” His voice shook as he spoke. The same words he spoke whenever she appeared.

The woman -- _Aeron_ , his traitor brain supplied. Her name is-- _was_ Aeron -- pushed off the club and strolled toward him. Webs bent out of her way, threads darted so they didn’t cross her. She oozed void and emptiness so thickly that it seemed to swallow Nicki whole.

“You were never worthy,” she murmured, as if she hadn’t heard him. She reached out and Nicki jerked back, just out of reach of her fingertips, breath catching in his throat. “I was to be her apprentice, _namdongsaeng_ , but you were simply convenient.”

Nicki sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, his entire body trembling. “I had morals.”

“You had weakness.”

He swallowed, fighting against the lump in his throat. His spit caught. He almost choked. “You were unstable.”

“Mm, yes, Entropy.” Her voice didn’t change. It remained the slow, even timbre that Nicki heard in his nightmares. The voice she’d had for fifteen years, in his mind. Lower, now, but still smooth. He imagined this was what she’d look like, had she been allowed to age. Her Korean features smooth but gaining lines around the eyes and mouth, her severe gaze gaining bags that sharpened her angles. She remained slight and thin, in clothes that Nicki could never remember, afterward, and her hair was cut into a harsh, chin-length bob.

The opposite her mother-- _their_ mother-- in every way.

“Except, we both know the truth in the lie.”

Nicki swallowed again. This time, he choked. Sputtering and coughing, tears in his eyes, he stumbled back from her and landed on his ass. She stared down at him through her nose, her gaze cool.

“You’re pathetic.”

“You’re dead,” Nicki replied, voice hoarse and cracking. “I _know_ you’re dead. I helped kill you.”

She smiled. “Yes, you did.”

And then she was gone, between one blink and the next.

Nicki shoved himself to his feet and closed his eyes, pressing the heels of his palms against his lids. Slowly, he counted backward from ten, allowing his breaths to even out.

When he opened his eyes, the threads had returned to normal, but the blood remained on his hands, and Nicki was too fearful to check if it covered his face.

He took another breath, whispered a prayer to a God who never listened, and folded himself into the Web.

There was no ‘home’ for people like him, but at least he could leave this place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and questions and feedback are always loved and welcomed!


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I'll edit this better later. I wanted to get it up so that I could show friends.
> 
> Hi friends!
> 
> It's almost 1am gimme a break on my clarity.
> 
> Theme for this chapter: [I've Been Waiting by Lil Peep, ILoveMakonnen and Fall Out Boy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQYPimscA20)
> 
> tw: sexual harassment and discussion of sexual assault

**Derek Lehrer**

_Now_

There were approximately sixty-four tiles making up the patterned drop ceiling in Derek’s bedroom. Approximately, because several were covered up by ceiling posters and his ceiling fan, and because many of the tiles were only partial, disappearing into the walls. He’d counted them maybe two dozen times today, but he never knew quite how to count the partial tiles along the edges, leading him to guess at how many equalled a full tile.

Zoe would know.

The thought made him scowl and he rolled onto his side in his skinny, twin bed, tucking one arm under his head and staring at the wall. He’d painted them a soft green, when he’d first moved in, and the colour reminded him of his parent’s house, back in Edinburgh, and the gardens his father spent long days tending in the summer. Derek had always loved helping out, but he’d never managed to convince Zoe out of her hole in the basement.

...And there he was, thinking of her again.

He sighed through his nose, the gesture ruffling his messy curls that were already in disarray from a week without proper maintenance.

A soft rap at his open door had Derek sighing a second time. He shoved himself, slow and reluctant, into sitting and raised both eyebrows at the door. Adair leaned in the frame, his arms folded loosely across his chest and a frown etched into his pale, cherub face.

“Hey,” said Adair.

Derek shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. “Hey.” The silence hung between them, the two words swallowed up by the awkwardness that permeated the air. Derek’s room, the smaller of the two rooms in the apartment, had been swallowed by mess in the last nine days. Empty pizza boxes were stacked hip high next to garbage, which was overflowing with candy wrappers and other take-out containers. The desk against the wall opposite his bed was stacked with empty water bottles and energy drink cans, plus notebooks and printed papers. The rest of the papers and pictures were pinned above the desk on the wall, with yarn twisted around push pins, creating a massive, interconnected web of articles, locations, people, and quick scribbles by Derek.

He didn’t know what it meant, only that he kept seeing bits and pieces of it in his dreams. Maybe, if he kept putting it all together, he’d eventually know why he was dreaming it.

“So, uh…” Adair tugged his fingers through his hair, blonder than usual from his exposure to the summer sun. “You wanna come out with me and Jackson tonight?”

Derek raised both eyebrows, gesturing to the monitor cuff strapped to his ankle. It blinked a steady green, indicating that he was being monitored. Zoe, Liesel, and Al all wore them too, he knew. He didn’t know about Chase.

No one had seen her since that night in the alleyway. He feared what had happened to her. What if she was just being used? What if she was going to fall further into the darkness of the city? What if she was wrong?

What if she was right?

He didn’t know what had happened. Didn’t know why Chase had brought Nat into MERCY’s clutches. They’d had everything handled. Even if Nat was undergoing Entropy, which none of them knew for sure, Zoe’s cuffs and collars were designed for that sort of circumstance.

But then, Madden had had the collar and cuffs on him. The rumour was that Nat had been shut off completely. Was that even possible?

Could you shut off an Alpha?

“Hey.” Adair snapped his fingers in front of Derek’s face. Derek blinked a few times. Adair had crossed the room while he’d been spaced out, and he now sat across from Derek, a frown on his face. “Stay out of your head. It won’t help anything.”

Adair smelled of apples and cinnamon, like the oatmeal he ate every morning while drinking coffee too hot and too bitter for Derek’s tastes. He was wearing one of Derek’s shirts, an old band-tee for some grunge band he thought was cool in high school.

He couldn’t even remember when he’d last listened to their music.

“Yeah,” said Derek, staring at his hands in his lap. The cuts and scabs on his knuckles had finally healed, but a few at his nails remained. He still hadn’t gotten all the grit out from under his nails. No matter how hard he scrubbed it wouldn’t leave.

It reminded him of what Nat had said, once. That once your hands were stained red, they never came clean again. They’d said it in the winter, drunk and hoarse, and the words had haunted Derek ever since. Was this what that as like? Grit that never came off. Hands that never felt clean.

He had at least one person’s blood on his hands. A man fighting for his life in a coma in the ICU. Giovanni. Shot in cold blood by Detective Benjamin Madden, the lunatic that had cornered them all.

Was Madden going to be punished?

“Derek.” Adair’s words were harder. He gripped Derek’s shoulders and Derek shrugged away from him. It never changed. Nine days and he kept circling the same points, the same moments, the same conclusions.

What had his life become?

“We’re getting you out of here, tonight,” said Adair, nudging him. “Ankle cuff or no ankle cuff, you’re getting out of this place.” Adair frowned, concern knitting his eyebrows together over his wrinkled nose. “You’re going crazy, man.”

Derek shrugged. “I’ll be arrested if I take one step out of here.”

At the door, Jackson’s voice rolled into the room, cocky and giddy. “Let me take care of that, bro.” Derek lifted his head and found Jackson tugging at his dark hair, which hung in limp, greasy strands around his face.

“You’re both taking showers, first,” said Adair, wrinkling his nose. “I get that you’ve been moping,” to Derek, “and you’ve been on some crazy conspiracy binge,” to Jackson, “but--”

“Hey!” protested Jackson, cutting him off. He shuffled into the room, his jeans too big and his legs longer than a regular person’s proportions. “It’s not crazy or conspiracies. The urban legends of Veda are _legit_ , babe. What about Ghost?”

Adair rolled his eyes. “ _But_ ,” he continued, voice stern, “that’s no excuse for dismissing personal hygiene.” He stabbed a finger into Derek’s chest. “You first.”

Another shrug. Derek got to his feet, picked up his towel from the back of his desk chair, and shuffled off to the bathroom. Behind him, he heard Adair and Jackson talking.

“You think he’s ever gonna recover?” asked Jackson.

Adair sighed. “I dunno, hun. It’s a lot.”

Derek frowned and kept walking.

Yeah. It was. Could anyone blame him?

Locked up. Isolated. Torn from his friends. All outside communication banned. If he made one wrong move, he could end up in Fort Cabal.

Derek managed to drag himself out of his head long enough to shower, turning the water so hot it turned his dark skin red, and let himself vanish into the vapours of the water, thoughtless and empty, distant from his body, until Jackson banged on the door and shouted that he was using all the hot water.

He got out, dried off, and shuffled to his room, where someone -- probably Jackson -- had laid out clothes for a night on the town. Black skinny jeans, dark green shirt -- the Delta colour, _huh_ \-- black vest with chains, and his converse spray-painted black with glowing green radioactive symbols over top. Add in a black choker, multiple wrist bangles, and some earrings he hadn’t worn in forever (tiny skulls), and the look was complete.

He blinked. Where the hell were they going?

Derek dressed, mulling over the options. How were they gonna get out? How were they supposed to get around the ankle cuff? Was he still being watched? SOLDIER cars had been parked outside for days, but seeing as none of them had left the apartment today, there was no way to know for sure.

He shook his head and turned his attention to his “crazy wall” as Jackson had put it, before Adair told him to shut up. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to what was on the wall, or to the connections he’d traced.

At the centre, surrounded by everything else, was a pink post-it note with two big, black dots drawn on it in Sharpie (he’d had to go to the dollar store for both), a musical scale with several notes drawn on that Derek didn’t know how to play, nor what instrument it was for, a lighter painted with a sugar skull, a cross necklace he’d purchased at a thrift store, several silver rings he’d pinned up with thumb tacks and gotten from the dollar store, and, lastly, and most strangely, a drawing of a man with a massive pair of white, feathered wings sprouting from his back.

Physical mutations in powers were incredibly rare, and Derek had never seen anyone with wings, let along wings that brilliant. Perhaps he was an angel. But, the halo that surrounded the entire man wasn’t a typically “angelic” colour: dark blue, tinged grey.

Strange.

Derek shook his head and pressed his lips together. Rings, lighter, music, post-it, necklace, and drawing. He’d hunted them all down after nightmares tore sleep and screams from him, night after night. They only abated when he got what he needed and added it to the wall.

“Yo, dude, enough with the wall,” said Jackson, his footsteps soft as he came into the room. Derek hummed, not looking away from the wall. His eyes trailed over half a dozen newspaper articles, most of them from near a decade ago. One was the official press release regarding the Radcliffe Incident. The others were less well-known. An ice-cream shop burning down in the middle of a winter night; a missing shipment of medical supplies, lost in a shuffle down at the docks, big enough to cause worry; the string of flu-like symptoms appearing in psychics, come and gone in forty-eight hours; a string of thunderstorms that started near Alaska and spread all the way down into California, all along the coast, over a period of two months; the greenhouse overhaul in the agricultural district; and, finally, the only article from a different time period -- five years ago, instead of nine -- the obituaries from Veda Daily on August 9th of that year, and, circled in pink Sharpie, the obituary for Gertrude Grey.

Derek pinched the bridge of his nose as everything swayed and went out of focus, before rolling back into harsh, bitter clarity.

“Yeah, sure.” He turned toward Jackson and almost groaned. Jackson was in torn black jeans with fishnets underneath, a mesh, black top with a ripped, pale yellow shirt -- Gamma colours -- over top, and knee-high leather boots. Eyeliner and black lipstick completed the look.

“Like it?” asked Jackson, waggling his eyebrows.

“Jackson, what the fuck?” It was a rhetorical question, they both knew, but the meaning behind it stood. Jackson was, on his best day, a gay disaster, and this was definitely not his best day. Today he was _also_ a gay disaster, but a much more… well. Derek wasn’t sure how to describe him.

Jackson grinned and did a little twirl, spinning a grey scarf around his hands and throwing it over his shoulders. “Do you like it?”

“Sure,” said Derek, because it was the nicest thing he could manage without dying. “Why not?”

Adair came in then and stopped dead, his jaw dropping and his eyes growing wide. “Damn. Not bad, babe.” He drew Jackson in and kissed him. Derek rolled his eyes and looked away, waiting for the sounds of wet mouths touching to fade before he looked back.

“So, how are we doing this?” asked Adair, raising his eyebrows. Of all of them, he was dressed probably the funnest. Black tank top, bright blue pants -- Epsilon colours, though Adair was a Delta, like Derek -- black belt, and ankle boots he’d long since broken in. Over top his tank top, he had a loose, three-quarter sleeve shirt in a darker blue than his pants, with the sleeves rolled to just below his elbows and the buttons undone so the shirt hung open.

Jackson scoffed. “Dude. Zoe designed the whole generation of this shit. She’s always got failsafes.” He pulled a small metal tool from behind one ear and grinned. “Just a moment, my good dude.”

Derek rolled his eyes as Jackson crouched down next to him. He folded his arms loosely and felt the telltale click as the cuff came loose before thunking to the ground.

“Ta-da.” Jackson did jazz hands as he stood. “Easy-peasy.”

“How’d you do that?” asked Derek, narrowing his eyes.

Jackson blinked owlishly, staring at Derek as if he couldn’t believe the words he spoke. “Dude, your sister has a failsafe in all her tech for your power. I couldn’t do it to anyone else.” He grinned. “Lucky, huh?”

Derek’s chest went tight and he took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. The gesture was too much like Nat and he winced, looked away from his roommates, and tried to compose himself.

“Yeah,” he croaked. “Lucky.”

Adair cleared his throat. “So… where are we going?”

Jackson grinned and spun around on his heels, waving his arms in the air before pointing a finger at the ceiling. “Gentlemen! I have been informed of a fantastic event in the warehouse district!” He cackled, clapping his hands together. “We are going to a _Fabulon_ concert.”

Derek blinked, feeling his heart drop into his stomach and splash acid onto his lungs. “Isn’t that basically suicide?”

“Not really,” said Jackson, squinting one eye. “I mean, it’s only bad if we like, ya know, fuck up. He doesn’t even try to touch first timers.” He shrugged and tucked his hands behind his head. “Though, I’ve been to a couple.”

Derek and Adair looked at each other. Adair looked pale. Derek sighed.

“You know what? Fine.” He shrugged. “Let’s go follow the pied piper.”

* * *

**Nat Carter**

_Nine Months Ago_

Above the door, the bell jingled, alerting the waitress behind the counter to Nat’s presence. She looked up, oversized eyes wide and buggy, but endearing. Maybe it was the bangs, too long without a cut, or maybe it was the freckles, which twitched whenever the waitress wrinkled her nose and blew at her hair. Or maybe it was the easy way she leaned forward on the counter, smiling with bright eyes and a light laugh.

“Hey there.” She spoke with a low drawl that marked her as rural prairies, and she lifted her chin in a sort of acknowledgement that Nat wasn’t used to.

Nat nodded, slow and without removing their gaze from the waitress. Her name tag, handwritten and peeling, read “Daisy” in a slanting script that was only barely legible.

The whole place had the same vibe: the vinyl, checkerboard countertops were peeling and stained in coffee rings from a thousand past customers. The walls were worn down tiles, with dirt clinging to the flaked and vanishing too-big grout lines between them. The red vinyl of the booths was cracked and peeling, just like everything else, and the smell of overripe citrus and old coffee clung to Nat’s nostrils and tongue as they crossed the echoing tile floor to the counter.

They sat, the stool creaking, and brushed away crumbs from what was probably toast. The crumbs rasped against the countertop, mixing with the sound of the fan, overhead, and the jukebox, barely audible, some country song that Nat didn’t recognize.

The waitress, Daisy, smiled and wiped at the counter, at a stain that was probably just as old as she was, and tipped her head at Nat.

“What can I get for ya?”

Nat glanced at the menu, eyes skimming across the worn displays that glowed faintly from buzzing backlights. They hummed against Nat’s spine, rising sparks in their blood.

“Coffee. Hot, black.” They paused and glanced at Daisy. “Please.”

Daisy winked. “At least you said please.” There was a teasing to her tone, but Nat caught the lines around her eyes and the tension in her shoulders as she turned to the coffee pot.

“Sorry.” Nat’s voice was low, gentle. “It’s been a long week.” Daisy paused, her hand hovering over a mug. “If it’s all right, I wouldn’t mind some French toast, please.”

Daisy poured the coffee, a laugh slipping out and bubbling into the diner. Nat caught a whiff of strawberry as she turned back to Nat – either shampoo or body lotion. Nat couldn’t tell.

She set it down in front of them, her smile more genuine. “Yeah, I can do that.” Her own voice was gentle, and she ducked into the back.

Nat sighed and picked up the mug. The warmth slipped through the ceramic and pooled in their palms, before flooding up Nat’s arms. The roast smelled the same as the rest of the diner: weak, over-roasted, and stagnant too long. A sip confirmed as much, and Nat grimaced. At least the heat killed half the taste, if only from burning off Nat’s taste buds. They kept drinking, if only for the caffeine, for the burn. For the grounding.

The bell chimed, and Nat tilted their head just enough to glance at the door out of the corner of their eye. Three men, big, burly, loud, lumbered into the diner, pushing against each other. They smelled of cigarettes and diesel exhaust. Their facial hair dirty and their eyes beady beneath the brims of their caps.

In the parking lot, three transport trucks, all of them with towing trailers, blocked in the pair of cars in the parking lot. One, small and dainty, made Nat think of Daisy. The other was an old pickup, and probably belonged to the cook in the back, if the low murmur of voices beneath the truckers’ boisterous words was anything to go by.

Nat shifted their gaze to the swinging door that led to the back of the diner. Awareness flowed through their veins, and they used the reflection in the door’s window to track the movement of the truckers as they dropped into a large, corner booth. A booth probably meant for six, or even eight. But they couldn’t squeeze into a booth for four, if not for their size, then for the forced contact, or the assumption of sexuality.

_Fucking straight men._

The swinging door opened, and Daisy came through, shuffling backwards and humming. She held aloft two plates on a tray: one with French toast, the other with an omelette.

“Hope you like eg—” As she turned, the words died on her lips, and the colour drained from her cheeks. The truckers hooted and Daisy swallowed, her throat bobbing. She offered a smile, only moments before easy-going, but now wobbly and marked by fearful eyes, at Nat. Nat didn’t return it. Instead, they tilted their head, just barely, in the direction of truckers and raised both eyebrows.

Daisy gave a minute shake of her head. Nat wasn’t sure what it meant. But they could hazard a guess. Don’t interfere, you’ll just make it worse. Don’t try anything, they’ll come after you. They aren’t safe.

_Please help me._

Nat took the offered food.

“Thank you,” they said, their voice a low murmur. “I appreciate the thought.”

Daisy nodded, nostrils flaring with her breaths. Just a little too shallow, just a little too fast. “Sure thing.” Her hands flexed against her skirt, fingers trembling as she plucked her notebook and pen from her apron pocket. Then, with a flick of her hair, she strode from behind the counter and over to the booth, where the smell of unwashed skin and diesel fumes leeched the life from the air.

A minute shift allowed Nat to watch Daisy and the men from the corner of their vision. They cut into the toast, soaking it in the syrup, and listened closely to their words.

None were kind. Daisy’s voice trembled by the second word, and the men jeered and cooed at her as they spoke. They made demands, not requests, and the distinct _slap_ of a hand meeting an ass rose up in the diner. Above them all, the lights flickered. The one above Nat flared bright and went out. Dead.

Nat took a deep breath, their vision red around the edges and the fork in their hands clattering against the ceramic of the plate, electricity dancing across the prongs. It leapt to the knife, singeing the air. The smell of ozone danced across Nat’s awareness, drawing more electricity to the surface. Their skin and hair crackled.

“Hurry up!” called one of the truckers, a cackle in his voice as Daisy scurried back behind the counter and started lining up coffee mugs on the counter.

Nat let their mind extend, caught the circuits in the jukebox, and turned up the volume just enough to cover their voice.

“They regulars?” Nat asked, without looking up from their food.

“Yeah.” Daisy’s voice cracked, but she kept it low, and from the corner of Nat’s vision, Nat could see that Daisy was focusing on pouring the coffees and adding the creams and sugars.

“The cook?”

Daisy swallowed, throat bobbing. Nat lifted their gaze a bit further, finding Daisy’s gaze, and saw the fear there. Saw the tremble in her lip and the whimper in her breathing. Her fingers shook. Her eyes watered.

“Old guy, deaf. Not…” She shook her head, just barely enough to move her bangs. “He can’t help.”

Nat hummed, stuffing a piece of the French toast into their mouth. As they chewed, they ran the details over in their mind. Three guys, all about three times the size of Nat. It wouldn’t be hard, but Nat couldn’t stay forever. The only way to deal with them would be _forever._

Or at least for long enough for Daisy to find somewhere else to go. Nat drummed their fingers against their fork. _Hrm._

“Have they ever…” Nat trailed off, letting the silence speak for itself.

Daisy shook her head. “They tried, once.” She sniffled, picking up a tray. “There was a big guy here then.”

And there was no one here now. No one Daisy could think of, anyway. Nat might have been near six feet tall, but they were built like a beanpole and underfed to boot. Without knowledge of their power, Daisy’s assumption made sense.

But then, Nat was used to people underestimating them. An old advantage, but a steady one, nonetheless.

“Do you have anywhere to go?” asked Nat. They swirled what was left of their coffee in the mug and swallowed it down.

Daisy sighed and set the cups onto the tray, hoisting them into the air. “No.”

Nat frowned. Damn.

The cruelty continued. The men jeered and hooted whenever Daisy came near, and made loud, obscene comments whenever she ducked into the back. They made no comments toward Nat, however. Perhaps it was because Daisy kept them distracted. Or, more likely, Nat cut quite a masculine figure in this outfit, in this position. Without seeing their face, which held their more angular features. From the front, they’d probably jeer. But from the back, Nat blended in. Just another anonymous traveller in a diner.

Too bad.

It would have been easy, to step in. To get up, cross the room, and lay into those men. To grip their shirts between crackling fingertips and snarl the fear of god into their lined and musty faces. To shatter teeth against bone and force them down smoke-charred throats until they choked, eyes bulging and stained fingers clawing at bluing lips and veined throats.

It would have been easy. But it would have solved nothing. Not unless Nat was willing to rip the still-beating hearts of these men from their chests, splintering bone and spewing viscera across the faded and cracked tiles.

Maybe they were. Maybe they weren’t. But here, in this diner, waiting for Daisy to come out of the back, Nat wasn’t willing to find out.

The lights above, crackled and flickered. Outside, one of the bulbs burst, sending glowing glass shards falling to the parking lot. Almost like snow.

One of the men jumped. The others hooted. Nat felt the sharp, hot gaze of one on their back. They rolled their shoulders and lamented the lack of snow, instead of focusing on what they should or shouldn’t do to these men.

It was almost that time, being the first week of October. Back in Alaska, the snow already coated the world, dampening noise and touch until it all seemed otherworldly. Here, a few hundred kilometres north of Victoria, BC, there was no snow yet. Only frost, clinging to the plants and the hunkering cars and shying back as the sun rose from behind the mountains, dared to grace the area with its presence.

Snow had its advantages. But it left trails. Made tracking easier and harder all at once. Animals knew to hide. Men didn’t.

It was easy to track men in the winter. Men were foolish. Men were stupid.

Men were arrogant.

Daisy reappeared, moving trays to and from the booth, and Nat’s scowl deepened further and further with every jeer, every slap, every comment thrown across the diner.

They closed their eyes and breathed through their nose. A mistake. They could smell the truckers even more strongly. Feel their jeers in their very _soul._ One of them cackled, sharp and unexpected.

Nat jerked. The mug fell, shattering against the tiles. The men fell silent. Nat breathed through their nose and slid off the stool, kneeling to pick up the shards and collect them in one of their scarred hands.

Footsteps, quick and light. Daisy knelt down across from Nat, her own dainty hands plucking at the pieces and placing them into her apron. Her fingers grazed the same piece as Nat’s and Nat hesitated, staring at the contrast between their hands. Daisy’s, pale and freckled, thin and unmarked. Nat’s, dark and scarred, etched with callouses and firm with tendons worn strong from climbing.

“Are you all right?” asked Daisy, staring at Nat with her too-big eyes. Her lower lip stuck out, brow furrowed. Concern. Curiosity. Maybe both.

“I could ask you the same,” murmured Nat. Pain, barely a prick. In their distraction, Nat cut their finger on a shard of a mug. They stared, watching the blood pool against the thin cut.

Daisy hummed, reaching out. “Oh dear, that’s not good.” But before she could make contact, Nat pulled their hand back.

“I’m all right.” They were better than all right. They were _awake._ Caffeine, rage, and adrenaline, mixed with the scent of fear – Daisy’s – and blood – Nat’s – burned through their veins, forcing the electricity to the surface and crackling it against their skin, beneath their jacket. Hidden.

 _Good._ Let them wonder. Let them all wonder.

Nat breathed through their nose. Focused on Daisy. Soft, sweet Daisy. Concerned Daisy. Harassed Daisy.

“Oi! Baby!” Daisy flinched. The sharp voice of one of the truckers dragged Nat back to the dilemma at hand. “You gonna keep squatting down there or you gonna come refill our coffees?”

A different trucker jeered. Without turning, Nat could picture his leer.

“I’m not complaining. Gives us a good view of those tits.” Daisy grimaced, tears in her eyes, and stood. She shuffled over to the garbage and brushed the shards from her apron into the bin. Her shoulders hunched near her ears, her body curled forward, away from the truckers.

“Aw, she’s shy,” cooed the third trucker.

Nat snapped.

They shoved themself to their feet and stalked across the diner, fists at their sides and lightning in their veins. A snark etched itself into their face and Nat bared their teeth. A light above Nat died. Then another. Then another. In a straight line all the way from Nat’s seat to the truckers.

They stopped, slammed their hands onto the table hard enough for everything to clatter and rattle, and _growled._

“The _fuck_ is your problem?” Their words hung in the air. The truckers stared, eyes wide and jaws dropped. One looked to the dead lights, then back at Nat. They could feel the lightning dancing through their hair and across their face, spider-webbing out from the eyes and tracking to their ears and their hair.

One of the truckers jeered. “You think you’re tough, kid?” Then, looking Nat up and down, his jeer turned to a disgusted sneer. “What even are you? Some kinda tr--”

The slur scraped Nat’s mind ragged, sending red pulses through their vision.

Trucker One reached out for Nat and Nat reacted without thinking. Caught his wrist in their hand and let awareness of his body flood their system, until they dove deep enough to find the nerves and the impulses and _there._

The man’s entire body went stiff, then he slumped forward, frozen and aware. Nat smirked, ragged and cruel and _hungry._

“The fuck?” Trucker Two. Trucker One’s eyes darted around, the only part of him that he could still control. “The fuck are you?”

Trucker Three said, “That’s a Meta. That’s a goddamn Meta.”

Nat didn’t look away from the men. Their bodies danced in Nat’s awareness, all organic wiring waiting to be lit up and burnt. Nat could feel their heartbeats, fast and terrified, beating against their ribs and lungs in a desperate attempt to escape.

The men held their ground. One of them pulled out a handgun. Nat didn’t move.

“Daisy? Please get the cook and go outside,” said Nat, still watching the two truckers.

“What--” started Daisy.

Nat took a deep breath through their nose, focusing on anything but the smell that burnt through the entire diner. Diesel and cigarettes and body odour.

_Fear._

From the truckers, from Daisy. Nat grimaced and held their ground. She had every right to be scared. Nat knew that.

Still, it didn’t make it hurt less.

“Get him out of here,” said Nat, voice firm. They let electricity crackle across the first trucker, knocking him out with a well-placed shock to his system. Simple biology.

Judah would be proud of them.

Footsteps. Awareness flaring. Daisy and another person, darting behind Nat, shuffling out the doors. But they couldn’t go any further. Not with the trucks blocking them in. Not with how frail the cook felt, nor with how Daisy looked. Fear made people stupid. Good when it came to the truckers, bad when it came to Daisy and the cook.

Nat wished they knew his name. It felt impersonal, this way. At least they could pay for the repairs with stolen money. That would soften the blow some. Sort of twisted irony, there. Steal from one to help another.

Robin Hood? Well, Nat supposed that bank ATMs probably were “rich” in this case, and the dude with the diner definitely wasn’t _poor_ , but…

Nat refocused. Let the anger push the thoughts away. _Easy, Nat. Remember your training._

Judah’s voice echoed in Nat’s mind, amused and light. _Steady, eolini-i, you are better than them. Enjoy it. Use it._

_Control it._

Guns. Trucker Two and Trucker Three. Handguns, probably illegal, aimed at Nat’s face. Metal sung in Nat’s veins, the whispers of their conductive nature bright beacons of light in their dark mindset.

“You’re going down, freak,” grunted Trucker Two. Nat quirked an eyebrow at him and smiled, crooked and amused.

Sure they were.

A singular gunshot. A high-pitched scream. The world slowed down. The bullet neared. Electricity crackled. Lead struck the electric shield that marched, invisible, around Nat, and blew it to particles no bigger than dust.

Dissipated in a split second.

Trucker Two lowered his gun arm, his expression going from smug to horrified in the time it took to blink.

Nat rose the other eyebrow. “That all?”

The door opened and closed. Daisy and the cook were gone.

Nat took a breath, centering. The urge was there, to reach out and pull the heartbeats to their own rhythms. To puppeteer muscles with sparks at their fingertips.

“Dumb bitch!” shouted Trucker Three. More gunshots. Bullets scattering into lead dust around Nat without pause. Clicks as they ran out of ammo. Nat’s awareness flickered.

The oven was still on in the diner. Gas. Nat couldn’t turn that off. Not unless they did it the old-fashioned away.

The brief distraction cost them. Trucker One jerked back to his feet, lurching as he grabbed his gun. He fired, went wide, blew out the window. Glass shattered everywhere, raining down. Outside, Daisy screamed.

The scent of blood. Not from Daisy or the cook. From Nat. Pain flickered at the edge of their awareness. Blood dripped from their shoulder.

Not that wide, apparently.

_Shit._

More gunshots. Bullets dispersing as their focus returned. Nat roared and sent their power forward, firing the three truckers into the wall. Guns hit the ground and metal warped and melted into the floor.

Gas. Lightning still spreading. Gas still leaking out of the oven.

_Shit._

Nat leapt for the window, electric shield wrapping tight, and jumped.

The diner burst into flames, leaping out the building. Nat caught Daisy and the cook, ripped the metal from the hulls of the trucks and dropped it around them all.

The fire hit the kerosene tanks and the trucks. Noise. Light. Heat. Fire. Everything roaring and the world exploding around them. Daisy screaming in Nat’s ear until their ears rang and the world went out of focus.

No telling how long they were under. Only that, when Nat eventually peeled back their shield, the cook was staring, Daisy was trembling and crying, and police sirens screamed in the distance.

Nat grabbed their backpack, grateful they were wearing it, and yanked out as many twenties as they could. They shoved them into the cook’s and Daisy’s hands, stuttering out apologies, and stumbled back.

“Where are you going?” called Daisy. “Hey!” Nat shook their head and kept going, twisting to run.

“I’m sorry,” they said, and they ran for the treeline, away from the sirens, away from the fire, away from everything.

_I’m so sorry._

* * *

**Derek Lehrer**

_Now_

It wasn’t Fabulon’s club. Jackson had told them both, over and over on the way there, that Fabulon did special concerts outside his club, that these concerts were safer, and that they were way more fun if you didn’t want to get your brain scrambled.

Frankly, Derek was just glad they were down in the warehouse district, rather than in the unofficially named red light district. _Pink Slip_ was smack dab amidst brothels, sex clubs, weapon stores, and all sorts of Westernized Chinese and Thai restaurants that were fronts for what was either drug smuggling or human trafficking, depending on the day.

Here, at least, he was blissfully ignorant as to all the illegal happenings that no doubt took place inside the storage houses, the warehouses, and the massive, steel shipping containers that spread out first in grids, then more haphazardly, from the docks.

...SOLDIER probably should have been doing more to deal with Red Light, but there was just _so much._ Not to mention, some of the most powerful metas in the city were criminals, and SOLDIER was pretty hesitant to hire anyone over a low Gamma. But fuck, Derek didn’t know _what_ SOLDIER did, and it wasn’t like they had the means to deal with powerful Metas.

Well, they did. But that was a recent development. Or maybe it wasn’t. He didn’t know for sure.

_Damn it, Zoe._

“Well, what do you think?” asked Jackson, gesturing to the warehouse.

It was… loud. That was for certain. A line spun out from the warehouse, whose open bay doors were shrouded in black curtains that didn’t quite block out all the pulsating lights that strobed alongside the heavy beats of the music. Baseline and percussion and synth and not much else. The people all dressed in clothes like theirs. Some seemed giddy, some seemed nervous. Even from this distance, Derek could pick out several displaying Fabulon’s symbol. He hoped none of those were permanent tattoos. He’d seen the ones with the neck tattoos. Those were terrifying.

The dark night enhanced the lights from the club, the shroud of shadows that followed the end of the line, and the balls of light that came from dim, flickering street lights. Beyond the booming of the music, the sounds of people and movement echoed back to Derek, with a few creaks and groans from the old warehouse like shots in the night.

On the breeze, the smell was body odour, perfume, and something old and rotten, like aging wood on a dock, or garbage left out in the sun on a summer day, or… death.

...He wasn’t going to think about that last one.

Nope.

“It’s fine, I guess,” said Derek, shrugging. He stuffed his thumbs in his belt loops and tried to swallow down his anxiety and trepidation. Fabulon. The Pied Piper. The Healer. The Messiah. Self-absorbed and arrogant enough to call himself the second coming, a modern god, and powerful enough that no one questioned it. Charismatic enough that he had a small army at his back.

He didn’t know how Fabulon kept control of his Apostles. He figured Metas that powerful could resist mind control. But, well, guess not.

“Still don’t know how I feel about this,” said Derek, frowning. “Fabulon’s…” He shook his head. What could he say that wouldn’t offend Jackson? The guy wasn’t a true believer or anything, but his whole thing with music, and Fabulon, was… disconcerting.

“Me neither,” said Adair, rubbing his arms and frowning. “I’ve got goosebumps, babe. Fabulon is one of biggest bads in Veda. What if he eats us?”

Jackson gave Adair a flat look. “Eat? Really?”

“I don’t know!” Adair threw his arms into the air, pouting. “People go in there and come out changed. He’s got like, thousands of people he controls twenty-four/seven. And he’s not even an _Alpha_ yet. What if he levels up while we’re with him? What then?” The fear dripped through Adair’s voice until Derek shivered with it, rubbing at his own arms and suddenly cold, despite it being July.

“I told you, Fabulon doesn’t pick new recruits in these concerts. He’s got pretty strict rules, baby, he’s not gonna hurt us.” Jackson smiled at Adair, his eyes soft and his voice silk. Derek swallowed, looking away to avoid watching anything he wasn’t supposed to. His chest was heavy, and a thin sheen of sweat had broken out on his skin. He swallowed again, trying to clear the thick, sticky lump in his throat that tried to choke out his lungs.

A breath. Then two.

“Let’s go,” said Derek. Without waiting for a response, or looking at his friends, he struck off toward the warehouse, shoulders squared and a steadiness on his face that he didn’t feel in the least.

The bouncer watched them approach the line and held out an arm as Derek move to pass around him.

“First-timers?” he asked, but it felt more like a statement than anything else. He hummed and tipped his head in the direction of the curtains. “Go on in.”

Derek blinked and nodded, stumbling a few steps before continuing on. Adair and Jackson caught up on either side of him and Jackson slung his arm around Derek’s shoulders.

“What was that about?” asked Derek, looking to Jackson as they came near the curtains.

Jackson grinned. “Newcomers get precedence, so we have an opportunity to know what life is like on this side.”

Derek blanched, his mouth dry. “Great.” He couldn’t keep the waver out of his voice.

A few more steps and they hit the curtains and, a moment later, he stepped into an entirely different world.

Beyond the curtains, the warehouse was transformed. Dozens of lights flickered and pulsated against high, beamed ceilings and the flat black of the floor. Colours whirled around the room, bouncing off curtains and sheer fabric that hung from the ceiling beams and the walls. No windows were visible, but Derek had seen them from the outside. The crowd wasn’t many people, but one living, breathing mass of moving, swaying flesh clad in leather and fishnets. Despite the lights, it was dark, and Derek squinted to see anything beyond the neon glow of the blacklight lit clothes.

He breathed and found the air thick and humid. Wet with body odour and weighed down with perfumes and colognes and alcohol.

And there was something else. Something that rose the hairs on the back of his neck and had him looking over his shoulder not five steps in the door, wanting back out.

 _Something was wrong._ But Jackson and Adair seemed fine. Neither of them showing any of their anxiety signs.

So what was it he was feeling? Was someone watching him? Was it the music? The bittersweet, alcoholic taste of the air? Or something else? Something he didn’t have a proper sense for?

People pushed around him into the club. Derek stumbled. Hot flesh slid against his skin, separated by two layers of cloth too thin to matter. He grimaced and straightened, trying to shake the weird fog pressing at the edges of his head.

_Clubs._

“Let’s go!” shouted Jackson. He grabbed Adair and pulled him onto the dancefloor. Derek bit back a curse and followed after them. Dancing? Maybe not. But being left behind? Way worse.

The anxiety lingered. He couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. He wasn’t scared of breaking rules. This wasn’t enough for Cabal, he knew that, logically. And he’d broken curfew almost every night for four years, back in high school.

So what was this?

He pushed through the throng of pulsating, warm bodies, following Adair and Jackson into a small pocket of air and odour that fit maybe one and a half people.

Pressed together against the noise, they danced. Derek kept his arms high so he didn’t bump into anyone and found himself falling into the beats. They turned from fast and high to lower and more twisted, almost like a lie made into rhythmic hip-hop. He swayed, nodding along with the deep bass of the beat. Against his back, Adair and Jackson danced, plastered to one another and one of them with their mouth against the other’s throat. He could feel it, the way he always could, and saw it whenever he spun.

His gaze spun around with his movements and he found the raised platform at the centre of the club, which held the DJ booth and the one and only DJ Thad Fabulon.

Derek fell still, his eyes wide as he watched Fabulon. Tall, muscular but lean, blond and scruffy, but in a way that felt sexy, rather than unkempt. Derek swallowed and watched the movements of his arms and head. Head bobbing with the music, headphones over his head and off one ear. His lips moving as he sung along, inaudibly, to his beats. His whole body swaying.

The music changed again, this time something fast that Derek thought was probably J-Pop. He kept staring. After a long few seconds, Fabulon raised his head and his brilliant, otherworldly blue gaze met Derek’s. With the spotlight on his booth, every detail of him was obvious. He grinned, crooked, and winked. Derek swallowed.

The feeling of _not right_ grew, but it wasn’t Fabulon. No, it seemed to be coming from _behind_ Derek.

He frowned and turned around, following the feeling in his gut, and the smell about knocked him over.

_Ozone._

His heart plunged into his stomach. Then further, down into his groin, then down into the ground and toward the core of the planet. He stumbled, reached back. Caught Adair based on the shirt. Head swinging around, he tried to find the source, felt for the crackle in the air.

Found both. A spot of darkness in the corner where a broken light hung, its shadow stretched out grotesquely by the light next to it. Derek swallowed.

“Dude,” came Jackson’s voice in his ear. “What’s up?”

“Nat,” breathed Derek. Jackson went still. So did Adair. The whole world seemed to zero in on that single spot of darkness. Everything seemed to slow and fade out of focus.

The music cut out, sharp and sudden enough that it felt like a slap. Everyone jerked around, shouting. The lights flashed -- all of them going out bar the one over Fabulon’s DJ booth. The darkness loomed. Derek shuddered. He couldn’t see _anything_ but the booth and Fabulon’s pinched, furious face.

“The hell?” came a voice next to Derek.

“Who turned out the lights?”

“Piper!” shouted a voice. “Messiah!” More confused voices joined the chanting, as if it was some kind of planned event.

Derek knew better. He knew this smell, this sensation, as well as the beating of his heart.

“We need to go,” came Adair’s voice in his ear.

“Wait,” said Derek, though he didn’t know why. He pulled forward a few steps.

Another light, the one that’d been out originally, flashed on. Beneath the brilliant, red-tinged spotlight, stood a man Derek didn’t recognize, and Nat Carter.

Derek sucked in a sharp breath, feeling the hot air stick to his teeth. _No._ Nat was in _Sanctum_. Nat was in Sanctum. Nat was in Sanctum.

But repeating it didn’t make what he saw less true.

“Holy shit,” breathed Jackson. “That’s _Ghost._ ”

Derek twitched, head swinging in the direction of Jackson’s voice, then toward the two again. He knew Nat’s face. Hell, he’d seen that face in so many different expressions over the last nine months. Most recently, nine days ago, and terrified.

“You sure?” asked Adair, on Derek’s other side. Derek swallowed and swung his gaze from Fabulon to Nat and the man - Ghost.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, _shit._

“Yeah, man! That’s. Holy fuck. That’s _Ghost._ ”

“Nicki,” came Fabulon’s voice, smooth and silky like almond milk. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

A chuckle from Ghost. Nicki? Was his name, _Nicki_? That wasn’t all that intimidating. Maybe that’s why he went by Ghost.

Jokes. That meant he was starting to disassociate. Shit.

Shit fuck damn.

“Not me,” said Ghost, spreading his hands. “Them.” He nodded to Nat, who grinned.

They snapped their fingers and lights swung around, their creaking bringing more shouts from the crowd. A white one ignited, bathing Nat in light as they leapt down from their pedestal and strolled across the crowd. It parted for them, but Derek couldn’t tell _how_ or _why._

“I’ve been told you can help me,” said Nat, their voice echoing off the walls. The whole crowd fell silent. Derek swallowed hard. He tried to push forward, to see Nat better, but Adair held fast to his wrist. “We’re both visionaries. I’m sure you understand.”

“What do you want?” Fabulon’s voice was pinched, his whole expression shuttered.

Derek swallowed.

Psychics couldn’t touch Nat. He guessed Fabulon was learning that the hard way.

“I want an army,” said Nat.

The air flew from his lungs.

“You have one,” finished Nat.

Fabulon scoffed. “Not a chance.”

Electricity crackled off Nat, raising the hair on Derek’s arms. He shivered, feeling the lightning travel through his spine. It was calling to him, that lightning. It recognized him.

 _Nat_ recognized him.

Would they see him? If he pushed forward? Could they sense him? Or was it just their power?

“You don’t bring your Apostles to your parties, do you?” asked Nat. Derek sucked in a sharp breath and stumbled backward. This was a fight, then. This was gonna be a fight. And Fabulon had twelve and Nat one themself and Ghost.

And Fabulon had all of them, if he wanted.

“I’m done with this,” said Fabulon. “Diablo.”

“Don’t move, Fiyero,” came the purr of Ghost’s voice as a man bleached hair, a black beard, and a shitton of tattoos stepped out from the shadows near Fabulon. Fiyero, presumably, nodded and disappeared.

Fabulon paled. “Wait,” he said, “wait you’re one of _mine._ ” The growl grew, building and building until it took over the whole room and swallowed everyone whole. “I’m not done with you!”

And then everyone started screaming.

Derek twitched, his mind itching. He rubbed at his head and closed his eyes for a moment. Regretted it, because everything seemed to sway behind his eyelids.

“We need to go!” came Adair’s voice. His hand tugged at Derek’s wrist.

“But--” started Jackson.

“Nat,” whispered Derek.

“Now!” shouted Adair over the noise of the lightning and the shouts and the gunshots.

 _Gunshots._ Dear god.

He hauled them through the crowd and they burst through the curtains. Footsteps behind them. Derek kept running, Jackson and Adair keeping pace. They ran and they ran and they _ran_ until everything went silent and nothing lingered on Derek’s skin but sweat and fear.

They stumbled, all of them, falling into an alleyway, blocks away from the club, and bent double, gasping for air.

“I can’t believe Nat went up against _Fabulon_ ,” whispered Jackson, once he caught his breath. He stared at Derek with blown wide eyes. “Holy shit, man. They’ve got balls to do that alone.”

Derek blinked. What? “They weren’t alone,” he said, brow furrowing.

Adair looked between them both. “Yeah, they were. I mean, unless you’re counting _you_.”

A scowl threatened to break free at the insinuation in his tone, but Derek shrugged it off. There was more important stuff right now. Like why they only remembered Nat.

“No, Ghost was there,” said Derek. He looked at Jackson. “You _just_ saw him. You were freaking out!”

Jackson shook his head. “Nah, dude. I think I’d remember _the_ Ghost showing up at a club.” He rolled his eyes. “Come on, man. You gonna tell me he was invisible?”

No. Because everyone had seen him. _Jackson_ had seen him. So why didn’t he remember?

Derek cast a glance back toward the club, despite it being out of sight, and frowned. “But…,” he started.

“Listen,” said Adair, “we can sort this out later. We need to _go_ . There’s a shit ton of Alphas and Betas in there, including _Nat fucking Carter_. We need to get the hell of out this district.”

Derek nodded. Yeah. Yeah, they could figure this out later. When he wasn’t so foggy and confused. When things started to make more sense in his head. When he could smell something that wasn’t ozone and ash and blood.

He swallowed.

“Head north,” he said. “Nat’s got a range. We wanna be out of it before we hitch a ride.”

Adair nodded. “Right, let’s go.” He took Jackson’s hand and caught Derek by the wrist, pulling them forward.

Derek stumbled and forced himself to follow, even as his head kept turning as he tried, in vain, to catch another glimpse of the club.

Had Ghost really been there? Or was Derek misremembering? Or was it something else?

Fabulon could control people. Could he erase minds too? And why would he erase Ghost but not Nat?

And why hadn’t it worked on _him_?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D :D :D


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has left feedback!!! I love it so much!!
> 
> Theme for this chapter: [You're Gonna Go Far Kid by The Offspring](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEZRKgFIkxc)
> 
> TW for this chapter: some mild ableism, discussion of death, smoking? I guess? That's about it.

**Chase Steele**

_Nine Years Ago_

Chase kept her head down as Ms. Elion led her toward the dorm building that would be her home for the next six years. Ms. Elion chattered away with all sorts of information that was probably very useful, but Chase didn’t absorb any of it.

She didn’t really care about all the amenities, or the menus, or the dorm advisors, or anything like that. All she cared was that her dad was leaving Veda for good -- sent overseas on a military operation in Japan that could last anywhere from a month to a decade. Something about a security breach in Veda’s sister city of Shinka and a need for more of an overseas military presence. Seeing as Canada had been the first country with a Meta-Tech city, it made sense, he’d said, for Canada to have a presence in Shinka during such a difficult time.

Chase didn’t care. All she cared was that her dad, the only friend she’d ever had in Veda, was leaving. He’d always been there, ready to help her when she needed it, translate when she couldn’t, and provide a hand in all things. He’d been there every day in third grade when she’d gotten her hearing implants and was learning how to understand the world with a sense she’d only barely had for most of her life.

“Now, Chase, you’ll be rooming with a girl your own age, as is standard in the dorms. She’ll be your roommate, barring any complications, for the next six years, all through middle school and high school,” Ms. Elion was saying as she led Chase up the walkway. “She’ll have the same homeroom class as you, and around the same power level.”

Chase nodded and lifted her head. She pulled one suitcase, Ms. Elion pulled the other and had a duffel bag over her shoulder, and Chase wore a backpack. That was it. Her entire life in four bags. It felt almost sad. She was twelve years old and all she had was four bags to her name. And one of her suitcases was filled with books and stuffed animals.

(That was the one she’d given Ms. Elion. Ms. Elion had been nice, but that didn’t mean Chase was pulling her super heavy bags. Frick that.)

Everything else in the house that might have been hers and was definitely her dad’s had been tucked into a secure storage unit in the warehouse district. When he came back -- and it was a _when_ not an _if_ , her dad was strong, he could handle whatever was going on in Shinka -- they’d unpack the unit, get another house, and go back to living in the fringes of Veda, way at the edge of the northwest housing area, where the ocean broke against the jagged, black cliffs off the shores, and the sea foam turned to mist and fog against the gravel and stone.

As Chase looked up, she found herself face to face with the dorm building. Six stories tall and that weird pseudo-modern style that all buildings in this area were. West Residence, a section of the southwest district above the warehouses and farming district, was an entire section of a city district set apart from the rest. Built as a massive, intertwining set of neighbourhoods for the handful of schools in the area, West Residence was almost entirely students.

But then again, in Veda, that was pretty average, with seventy-five percent of the city under twenty-one, it wasn’t hard to carve out sections of it just for the teenagers. It was probably good marketing, actually.

She scowled at the grey bricks and white siding, at the carefully maintained lawn with its benches and bubbling fountain, at the peek of a basketball court out back. At the handful of people who were already there, watching her, judging her, with eyes that lingered and mouths that whispered.

Too low for her to hear. Stupid hearing. Stupid technology. Stupid imperfections.

Stupid change.

Chase bunched up her shoulders and thumped up the stairs to the building. Ms. Elion pushed open the front door and Chase stepped into the foyer.

Two stories high, with glossy, golden wooden floors. Soft couches scattered against panelled and painted walls with paintings hung above, all marked with dates and names that had Chase wondering. She set down her suitcase, mind already shifting across the pieces of history in the building. She stumbled forward a step, caught herself, and crossed the area rug on the floor to stand before a painting of the very cliffs and breaking waves she’d just been thinking of.

With hesitating fingers, Chase reached up and grazed the picture. An image rose up in her mind, of a girl so dark she almost vanished into the shadows, a few years her senior, sketching at rapid speed while she balanced in the cracks of the cliff side, struggling to gather the image in both mind and charcoal before she had to flee from the oncoming storm.

“Liesel!” came Ms. Elion’s voice. Chase jerked, stumbling back from the painting with flushed cheeks and a dazed expression. Her head swung one way, then the other, looking for Ms. Elion. Instead, she found the very girl she’d seen in her mind, with her molten brown eyes and long, curly hair.

She smiled and nodded to Ms. Elion. “Mera, a pleasure as always,” said the girl -- Liesel -- before speaking to Chase. “Chase Steele, I presume?”

Chase nodded and lifted her hands to sign, then hesitated, lips pressed together as her silent question bounced around her head.

“I know sign,” said Liesel, her voice soft and melodic. “Though it’s not my first language, I should be able to manage well enough.”

With a soft sigh, Chase let the tension flow from her shoulders down into the floors. This place still sucked, but Liesel seemed nice, and at least she wouldn’t be silenced here.

She flipped through a few quick motions to warm up her cold fingers -- the cliffs had left a chill through her, despite the hot, August weather -- before signing.

‘Nice to meet you,’ she said, fingers flicking through the air. ‘Are you a student?’

Liesel giggled and rested a hand against her mouth, then lowered it. “Yes, I’m actually about to start high school at Griffon Academy.” Chase sucked in a breath. _Griffon Academy._ Even at the fringes of Veda, she couldn’t escape the rumours of the most prominent academy in all of Veda City, and perhaps all Meta-Tech cities.

Shinka had tried to create their own equivalent of Griffon Academy, and so had Starkelin, the Meta-Tech city just outside of Germany. But neither had managed. Griffon Academy, GA, was the best of the best, the result of almost a hundred years of Metahuman research, all culminating in the most advanced, most streamlined, and most successful Metahuman Power Advancement Curriculum in the _world._

No one else could keep up, and the headmistress, Katherine Griffon, was often attributed to its success, seeing as she was the granddaughter of one of the two founders of Veda, itself: Professor Abraham Griffon, and also a decently powerful Metahuman, despite her age.

“Liesel is a Gamma, with quite a bit of Beta potential,” said Ms. Elion, taking up Chase’s discarded suitcase. “She’s also the dorm advisor for your floor.”

Liesel grinned. “Yup! If you ever need any help, just come knock on my door.” She winked at Chase and Chase felt her cheeks heat. She was _so cool_. But why was such a powerful Meta, especially one going to Griffon Academy, living in West Residence? Sure, WR wasn’t far from Central, where GA was, but even with the bullet train, she was making her commute longer than it needed to be.

Why stay here? Especially with lower power Metas, like Chase, who was only a low Delta. Her power began and ended with short flashes of memory when she touched something. It wasn’t something she was terribly good at controlling, and she never knew what she’d get when she touched something, only that it was usually _something._

“Well, why don’t we get you dropped off in your dorm room?” said Ms. Elion. “I’m sure Liesel has some more preparation to do before the school year starts.”

Liesel gave a light laugh and waved her off. “A lot, but it’s fine.” She turned her attention toward Chase. “Why don’t I drop by this evening and give you a rundown of the dorms? I heard this is your first time living away from home.”

Chase nodded and cast a look to the floor, sighing softly at the reminder of her isolation. Her phone felt heavy in the pocket of her jean vest. Dad said he’d call when he could, but it’d been almost two days since he’d left -- she’d spent the nights at the group centre that Ms. Elion ran between helping disabled students, like herself -- and she hadn’t heard anything, yet.

There was probably a good reason why he hadn’t called, but Chase didn’t know what it was. And the media blackout around Shinka left her shaky and nervous in her stomach. Shinka was _huge_ , second only to Tokyo in the entire country in terms of sheer population. So how had they managed such a perfect blackout in Shinka, and around Shinka, but nowhere else in Japan?

She was missing something. She just knew it.

Ms. Elion led Chase, without another word, to the elevator, and took her up to the third floor. Apparently, this entire building was middle schoolers, except for the dorm advisors, who were all in high school, plus the dorm advisor manager, who was a fully grown adult, which Ms. Elion explained in the elevator, once Chase was done staring at the floor.

The elevator dinged open and Chase followed Ms. Elion down the hallway and to room 309. She pulled down the FOB, a small plastic looking stick attached to Chase’s new keyring, and tapped it against the door, which unlocked and swung open with a quiet click.

Ms. Elion handed over the keys and Chase followed her inside.

Whereupon she was, immediately, assaulted by a loud voice and a tight hug.

“Hiya!” came the laughing, feminine voice. “You must be my roommate. I’m Zoe! It’s so totally awesome to meet you.”

Chase stumbled and blinked a few times, trying to shake the ringing from her ears. The girl released her and Chase got a good look at her. A chubby girl a few shades of brown lighter than Liesel stared at her. She was a few inches shorter than Chase, with a big, curly afro that was a medium brown with what looked like highlights in a golden brown, that was peppered with half a dozen pencils and what looked like a protractor.

Chase waved and dug out her phone, flipping to the text-to-speech app she used for most non-sign communication. Zoe cocked her head to one side, brow furrowed, and Chase held up one finger to tell her to wait.

After a few seconds of typing and grabbing words from her customized predictive text and shorthand autocorrect, the phone spoke in a feminine voice that was a decent approximation of what Chase imagined she’d sound like.

‘Hi. Chase. New roommate. Can hear, can’t speak. Nice to meet you.’

Zoe blinked a few times, then beamed. “That’s so neat! I mean, not the not-speaking thing, but the phone thing. Is it custom?” She bounced up and down in place, her curls bouncing with her, and her dark eyes were bright and almost seemed to sparkle with her excitement.

Ms. Elion chuckled behind them both. She set down the duffel bag on the floor and rolled both suitcases so they sat next to it. “Well, it seems you two are going to be just fine. I’ll be off, then.” She nodded to Chase. “You’ll be all right?” A question phrased like a statement, Ms. Elion’s favourite kind.

Chase gave her a thumbs up, partially just to get her to leave. She was _tired_ of Ms. Elion’s particularly brand of gentle encouragement. It’d be nice to be around someone her age who didn’t know all the details of why she was living in the dorms now. Especially someone who seemed more than happy to fill in all the silences that Chase left hanging.

Ms. Elion nodded again. “Good,” she said. “Feel free to text me if you have any questions or need anything. I’ll see you at the end of the month for our next meeting.”

Ugh. Right, those. She’d forgotten about those. Since Dad was gone and Chase was on her own and a “disabled resident of Veda” (even if she thought they took it too far, lumping her in with people who needed day-to-day hands-on care. She was disabled, but not like, severely. She just had hearing implants and had never bothered to learn how to speak. So what?) that meant she had to meet once every two weeks with her social worker -- Ms. Elion, in this case -- in order to review her living situation and all that.

It was mostly a bunch of eye rolling, nodding, and signing papers that said she was receiving the care and funding she needed from the VCUSCA and the VCDCIS. Also money she didn’t particularly _need_ but definitely enjoyed.

Seriously, whoever thought giving a twelve-year-old, who was living on their own, in dorms with other twelve year olds, $6,000 a year just to live, when they didn’t make any of their own food, pay any bills, or anything like that was probably very, very stupid. But Chase was _so_ not complaining.

It was easily the best part about being on her own.

But she’d trade it all in an instant to have her dad back.

Chase shook off the thoughts and gave a last nod to Ms. Elion, who turned and left, shutting the door behind her. Chase shoved her keys in the pocket of her vest and looked around the room. Zoe had gone silent, probably to let Chase adjust or whatever.

The room wasn’t all that big. It held two single beds, one on either side of the door, an end table for each bed, a desk beneath each of the two windows that overlooked the front yard, and a pair of dressers, one between each desk and the wall to its side.

Based on the lack of doors, Chase figured the bathrooms were communal. She remembered, vaguely, Ms. Elion mentioning something about a dining hall in the building.

Both were… different and weird, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.

Zoe flopped down onto the bed filled with extra pillows and blankets, plus half a dozen notebooks, and as she landed, a bunch of papers went flying. She stared at them with all the energy of a sad and defeated business man, and sighed.

“I’ll find them later,” she muttered. She rolled over, onto her stomach, and propped her chin in her hands so she could stare at Chase. “So, what do you do?” she asked, grinning.

Chase sat down, slow and gingerly, on the other bed, and set her backpack down on the floor. She started typing again, brow furrowed.

A minute passed.

‘I can see memories of objects if I touch them. I see the past,’ she said, via the phone.

Zoe grinned. “That’s pretty rad!” She wiggled on the bed. “I sorta make things.” She furrowed her brow. “Sorta, anyway.”

Chase raised her eyebrows, cocking her head to one side.

Zoe shrugged. “I can take things apart in my brain and rebuild them into better things, or I can just figure out how to build things. But I have no idea what they are until I build them, and I never know how I do it.” She shrugged. “Basically, anything I make has to be reverse engineered by smarter people.” She huffed. “But _I_ think what I do is cool.”

Chase nodded. An inventor? That was _awesome._ She was just a lame, low level psychic, but inventors were such a cool class of Metahuman. Especially since it was a pair of inventors that had started the whole city and--

And there she was, rambling inside her own head again about history and science and all sorts of other things no one but her dad had ever cared about.

“Hey,” came Zoe’s voice, dragging Chase back to the present. “Do you wanna go to the VaCorp expo this weekend? I hear Vacilli is unveiling all sorts of new tech, and that his daughter is gonna be there!”

Chase blinked.

‘His daughter?’ she asked, typing.

Zoe frowned. “Oh yeah, I guess that’s like, super recent news. Yeah so, he officially adopted Taryn Radcliffe like, last week.” Zoe grinned. “It’s super rad. The smartest guy in the city is the dad to the most powerful girl of all of us.” She sat up and bounced where she sat. “So she’s gonna do a power demonstration _and_ there’s gonna be all sorts of new tech. Wanna come with?”

Chase smiled and nodded. Why not?

It was better than being alone.

And she was already liking Zoe, despite the circumstances. Maybe this would all be a decent distraction, until Dad got back. Maybe she could make it work.

* * *

  **Derek Lehrer**

_Nine Months Ago_

The low beats of dance music pounded their way into Derek’s head, skewing his vision and leaving him pinching the bridge of his nose in a futile attempt to clear the fog that settled across his temples.

With a quiet curse, he shoved himself to his feet and stalked out of his room and down the hall. The music grew louder, thrumming with the beat of synthetic bass lines and drum machines.

He shoved open the door to Adair and Jackson’s room. The wall of noise greeted him, screaming into his veins and pushing under his fingernails to get into his skin. Derek winced, vision blurring, and shoved through the room, turning off the speaker. The music kept playing from Jackson’s phone, but much softer than before.

In the relative quiet that followed, Jackson finally noticed him. He sat up on the bed, fast, and looked around, eyes wide, then narrowed, as he saw Derek and put together what happened.

“Dude!” protested Jackson. “Come on, it’s just music.”

Derek scowled and folded his arms, putting himself between the speaker and Jackson. “I told you, your creepy cult music gives me _migraines_ .” He bit the words out, struggling through the wall of pain that descended across his skull. Starbursts of light lit up the edges of his vision, blotting out the posters on the walls, the extra blankets piled at the end of Jackson and Adair’s king-sized bed, and the area rug meant to look like a portal from _Portal._

Jackson pursed his lips and puffed out his cheeks like some stupid anime character, his brow furrowing. “You could be nicer about it. And it’s not cult music!” He chucked a throw pillow at Derek, who caught it and dropped it onto the floor.

“I _have_ been nice,” snapped Derek, baring his teeth. “I’ve been nothing _but_ nice for _months_ while you get sucked up in this fucking Fabulon fad.” He hated swearing. It left his mouth feeling dirty and his tongue like sandpaper. “But I’m _done_ Jackson. Get headphones or stop. Those are your options.”

Jackson scowled and shoved himself off his bed, reaching for his speaker. Derek grabbed his hand.

“Dude. You’re not in charge of me. You can’t tell me what to do.” Jackson tried to yank his hand free.

Derek ground his fingers into Jackson’s wrist, scowling. “It’s called being _courteous,_ jackass.”

The two glared at one another, neither giving ground. Derek held fast to Jackson’s wrist and Jackson kept a constant backward tug up, trying to pull himself free. They held gazes, narrowed eyes and ground teeth clashing.

“Guys.” Adair’s voice, soft and diplomatic, as he entered the room. He grabbed the phone. The music vanished completely, leaving glorious silence behind.

The spell broke. The pain lifted from Derek’s head and he blinked a few times before releasing Jackson’s wrist.

What had he been thinking, grabbing him like that? They were _friends_. Sure, Fabulon’s music was bad, but was it bad enough to start a fight?

“I’m sorry,” said Derek, shaking his head. No more pain. No more migraine. Weird. “I dunno what came over me.”

Jackson rubbed his wrist and frowned, brow furrowed. “Yeah, man, me neither.” He looked at his phone, still held aloft by Adair. “I think I’m done with Fabulon for a bit. If I do start listening again, I’ll wear headphones.” He looked to Derek and offered him a crooked smile with crinkled eyes. “Sorry, dude.”

Adair held the phone up, frowning at it. “You ever wonder about his music?” he asked.

With a shrug, Jackson took his phone. “Yeah, sometimes.” He tossed the phone onto the bed and flopped down next to it. “I dunno, man. It’s just a miserable day, ya know? Fucking October, man. Worst month of the year.”

Derek pouted. “I _like_ October,” he said, voice firm. October was Al’s birthday, his parents’ anniversary, and also Halloween. Sure, there were still a couple weeks until the holiday, but there was still the massive thanksgiving and harvest festival down in Farming, and the trees were all turning to orange, his favourite colour.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Jackson, waving him off.

Adair flopped down next to Jackson, eyes half-closed. “Hey man, could you go get something for dinner?” asked Adair. “Midterms are killing me.”

Derek shrugged and hopped to his feet. The conversation was over, but he didn’t really care. Adair and Jackson were good dudes, but Adair was stressed out of his skull and Jackson was taking the brunt of it. If that meant Derek wore some of Jackson’s stress, so be it. At least that meant they weren’t taking it out on each other.

“Anything specific?” he asked.

“Pizza!” declared Jackson, before dragging Adair down on top of him. “Extra pickles.”

Derek wrinkled his nose. _Ugh._ Dude had no taste whatsoever.

He escaped from the room before the two started making out and ducked back into his own room, grabbing his jacket, shoes, and keys before setting out into the chilly October afternoon.

The best pizza place in Veda was a ways away -- further north, near the suburbia that Veda had built for all the established families looking for a regular life in the futuristic city. Thankfully, the bullet trains ran often this time of day (they ran 24/7 and were completely computer controlled, so they sorta ran all the time, but hey, his point stood), so he just needed to get to the station.

The walk was pleasant, as it always as, and Derek took his time, enjoying the look of the trees along the streets. The electric cars hummed by, perfectly silent, and the buses and trams made their way through the streets as well. Hundreds of people passed him as he walked, but the noise didn’t bother him. It never had.

He enjoyed the mix of tech and nature in Veda -- the trees and flowers that kept everything green, but were watered by humming, garbage can shaped robots on three wheels that also cleaned up trash and alerted SOLDIER to any sort of nearby danger. The squirrels and birds that fluttered overhead, mixed with the security drones, shaped like spheres and about the size of a kickball, that patrolled above the streets for crime, and the K9 units, built to look like dogs, that helped lost people get where they needed to go and helped find lost things and kids.

It was a sort of utopia, he thought. A place where everything worked together in harmony. And the bullet trains, which raced above the streets, sweeping around the city, made that efficiency even better. Despite the size of the city, despite everything, they were always on time, and it took mere minutes to travel from one side of the city to the other, if you picked the right train.

Derek knew the trains by heart, having taken them all his life, and trotted up the stairs to the station, swiping his ID bracelet on the entrance before darting into his train.

The train car was packed, as always, and he slipped into a seat and settled in to watch the city race by.

Zoe used to tell him all about these trains, when they rode them together in elementary school. Come middle school, they’d been split up into different schools, and Derek had ended up sitting with Jackson and Adair, who were less about technology and more about wrestling and indy car racing.

He wondered what Zoe would say about the uptick in drones, or about the new preventative medications, or any of the new advancements hitting Veda this year. It was a good year for VaCorp.

But Zoe hadn’t talked about VaCorp in a while. Instead, she’d been focused on her contract work with MERCY, which allowed her access to a massive, kitted out lab that let her study whatever she wanted, provided she made what MERCY asked her to.

When she’d told him, she’d be elated. She was finally being recognized as the genius she was, she’d said. Derek had disagreed, saying that they were using her, that they were going to force her to make weapons and other sorts of tech.

MERCY was a menace, he said. MERCY was a blessing, Zoe had said.

They hadn’t spoken much, since.

Derek dragged himself back to the world of the living as the train stopped, and hurried out and down the street toward the pizza place. It was a beautiful day, but his thoughts on Zoe had soured his mood, and he didn’t bother to look at the blue of the sky or the oranges and yellows of the trees. Up here, in the north, there was a lot more nature and a lot less congestion, leaving the streets largely bare, this time of day.

Derek tried not to let the silence get to him.

Instead, he focused on getting into the pizza place and getting his pizzas -- one pepperoni, one with pickles and chicken -- before turning and heading back to the station.

As he walked, he felt a strange presence all around him. The hair on his neck stood up, and so did the hairs on his arms, despite the jacket.

A smell hit him. Sharp, tangy.

_Wrong._

The sharp, bitter scent had him stopping on the sidewalk and staring up at the sky. Brilliant blue, with the sun shining down, already halfway down the west side of the city. He frowned. Why could he smell a storm?

But the smell was more specific than that. The smell of burnt lab equipment came to mind, but that wasn’t quite right, either. No, this was something else entirely. Something that Zoe had rambled on and on about during his high school’s unit on Metahuman weather patterns. The World Storm. It smelled like the World Storm, barely remembered because it only struck once every fifteen years and he’d been… shit, eight or nine, last time it had struck.

But that wasn’t quite right either. The smell was more specific. More…

It struck him like lightning.

_Ozone._

And then a person struck him just as hard.

He stumbled, fell, and just barely held onto the pizza boxes. His butt stung and the pain burned up his spine, jarring his teeth. He blinked, vision blurry, and refocused.

Across from him was a very dirty, very scared person who looked about his age. They stared at him with wide, dark eyes. They were taller than him, but much thinner, and a few shades lighter than his own dark brown skin. But what stood out most to him, other than those wide, terrified eyes, were their freckles. Hundreds of them across their face and neck and what he could see of their collarbone, and every single one of them glowing the brilliant white-blue of lightning.

“Sorry,” mumbled the person, their voice low and hoarse. They scrambled backward from him, slipping before they managed to get up. Derek got up slower, careful to keep his hands and pizza boxes low and his body language open.

“I’m sorry, so sorry,” they kept saying, head swivelling one way, then the other, as if looking for something. They shivered and vibrated, seemingly both from cold and fear. They were also soaking wet, with their jacket and pants dripping a puddle around their feet.

Their bare, shoeless feet.

“Are you okay?” asked Derek, keeping his voice voice and gentle. “Do you need help?”

They stared at him for a long moment, then let out a sharp, low bark of laughter. A smile that seemed more from histeria than anything else split the lower half of their face.

“You have no idea,” they replied. They took a deep, shaky breath, blinking away tears that gathered in the corners of their eyes. “I…” They shook their head and pressed their lips together.

“Here,” said Derek, holding out one of the boxes. “It’s pizza with pepperoni. Really good.” He offered them a little, hopeful, smile.

They stared at him, eyes narrowed, hands trembling at their sides. A handful of people stared, but mostly they kept moving. There were more important things to them than this person in trouble.

The problem with big cities was apathy, Derek had learned that since he’d come to Veda, years ago, after living in a small town near Edinburgh where everyone knew each other’s names and never hesitated to offer a hand to a stranger.

Some things never changed, Zoe would have said, with that smile of hers.

The person stared at Derek, then his pizza, then, with shaking hands and a defensive pose, they took the pizza box, quick as lightning, and clutched it close to them.

“Thanks,” they mumbled.

“If I can help you, please, you can tell me,” said Derek. He pressed his lips together, trying to figure out what else he could say. “My name’s Derek, Derek Lehrer. I’m in all the tech books and whatever.” He gestured around to the city. “I could take you to the police--”

“No!” The streetlight overhead exploded, raining glass behind the person. Derek jumped. The stranger didn’t seem to notice. “No police. No government. No…” They shook their head, entire body trembling. Electricity crackled against their skin and danced across their clothing and up into their hair. “Thank you,” they said, voice steadier than before. “But, I’ll be fine.”

Derek didn’t believe them, but he didn’t get a chance to say anything about it, because in the next blink, they were gone, vanished as quick as they came.

He stared down at the singular pizza box and sighed. Whoever that person was, they were in a lot of trouble, and all he’d managed to do was offer them a medium pepperoni pizza. Surely, there had to be _something_ else he could do.

But Veda had a population of 2.3 million people, and the tourists and travellers added thousands to that number every day, especially this time of year, near the fall reading break for schools. How was he supposed to find the stranger in those circumstances?

He couldn’t. But at least he’d done _something._ And they had his name.

They’d contact him, maybe, hopefully, if something happened.

Or at least, he could hope.

And what was with that power? So out of control, so erratic. Was it safe for them to be running around a city like Veda, in this state?

But who was he to judge?

With another sigh, Derek turned and headed back to the pizza place.

He needed another pepperoni before he went home.

* * *

  **Nicholai Stavos**

_Nine Days Ago_

_Ozone._

The smell strong enough that it had Nicki choking, a hand over his mouth as the bitter tang blistered his tongue. He grimaced, spat into the gutters, and kept walking. Rain pounded all around, soaking him to the bone as thunder boomed overhead. The shouts of the storm covered its whispers -- whispers that spoke of an imminent change. Of monsters within men. Of secrets, shrouded.

And of death.

There were no people in the street, only cars; their headlights blurs of gold and white. Everything blurred in such heavy rain, but it left Nicki’s mind clear of what was needed from him tonight.

The voice in his head that sounded like Gertrude murmured apologies in Korean, whispering of promises that smelled the sickly sweet of overripe peaches. Nicki wrapped the smell of sweet around himself, until the ash of yesterday, the ozone of today, and the rot of tomorrow tangled together and left him muted to the physical world.

He kept walking, the world shifting in and out of focus as the rain pounded through his bones and into his soul. It coloured the Web grey and muted the brilliant gold at the centre of his thinking. Golden stars. Golden suns. Golden eyes.

No one in Veda City had golden eyes, yet those eyes haunted him wherever he went.

What did they mean? Who did they belong to?

And why did they lack even the barest taste of humanity? Even his gaze, cold and bleak as it was, kept enough familiarity with the world to be human. But this gaze, hot and vivid as it was, seemed so inhuman, so animalistic, that their human features left him feverish.

The Web bent around those eyes, taunting him with their inaccessibility.

He shivered and kept walking.

Through the streets and through the Web, drifting in and out of focus as needed. When a distance was too great or too wild to cross on foot, he stepped into the Web and pulled himself through the city, that way. But he did not make the entire journey by mind. No, despite the discomfort, despite the cold, despite the taste and smell of bitter ozone that refused to leave him be, he walked through the city as well.

He needed to, for this. He needed to taste and smell and see and hear what was becoming of Veda City. Nine months ago, when he’d sowed this seed, he’d wondered how long it would take to bloom. Now, it seemed the first petals were opening up on this rotten, bitter flower.

Somewhere, across the city, Nat Carter held the bleeding, broken body of Giovanni Vacilli.

 _Sorry, my friend_.

Somewhere, across the city, Chase Steele walked away from the answer to every question she’d ever had.

_A necessary sacrifice._

Somewhere, across the city, Fabulon tasted misery and fear and opened his arms as hundreds of new children flocked to his parish, pushed toward his twisted form of safety by the ever-increasing numbers of SOLDIERs marching the fair streets of their once, supposedly, safe city.

 _Their time will come_.

And now, Nicki finished his walk and turned through the wrought iron gates into the most expensive and well-maintained graveyards of Veda City.

He huffed out a breath and drew up the collar of his jacket, trying, in vain, to block out the rain.

Eight rows back, under a maple tree older than the city with thick, detailed knots in its wood, was a grey marble headstone, almost as tall as him and carved with elaborate spiderwebs and vines, meant to mimic the Web -- though Nicki was the only one alive who knew that. The carvers had only been given an image to recreate.

 _Gertrude Grey_  
_‘Jeong Mi-seon’_  
_Beloved Mother, Grandmother,_  
_And Metahuman Activist_  
_June 29, 1949 - August 9, 2014_  
_“From stardust we are born,_ _  
_ and to stardust we shall return.”

He sighed and pulled the lilies from within his jacket, laying them on the ground where the grass had long since regrown. He bowed his head and clasped his hands together, murmuring a prayer between his cold lips.

When he finished, he lifted his head, and found Aeron leaning against the tree behind the headstone. She nodded to him and Nicki sighed, scrubbing his fingers through his soaking hair.

“Why today?” asked Aeron, without preamble and with raised eyebrows. Nicki stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket and shrugged. He’d long grown used to seeing Aeron in times of stress. He’d had time, given how often she’d appeared after that first time, nine months ago.

After the initial shock had worn off, and he’d dealt with her visits a few times, he’d come to a rather simple conclusion: this wasn’t a ghost, this was simply a piece of his subconscious, manifesting as Aeron. Gertrude had warned him many times that splitting himself so often could permanently fracture his psyche.

As far as he was concerned, that was all Aeron was, a fractured piece of his subconscious manifesting as his greatest failure and regret.

At least she was decent company.

“You don’t know?” asked Nicki, raising an eyebrow at her. Aeron shrugged and stared at the headstone, silent. Nicki sighed. “Today, everything changes. All that Mom wanted is finally starting.” His mind was awash with all the threads and webs which had led to this day. Months, years, of preparation and prophecy.

Today, Nat Carter, the enigma of Veda, the Alpha from the north, the monster of the night, the _God of Thunder_ , fell. And no matter how high they rose from this night, this would always be an anchor point, the core of a new web.

NIne months of getting under Nat’s skin, nine months of watching them from up close and afar, nine months, nine _years_ of fighting his own psyche to get to this point, to become every bit the demon in sheep’s clothing that Gertrude had trained him to be.

Tonight, Nat Carter fell. And soon, perhaps not tomorrow, perhaps not even a week from now, something else would rise in their place.

Something darker. Something sinister.

Something controllable.

“Do you truly believe this will work?” asked Aeron, studying her nails. She stepped forward and rested a hand on the headstone. The rain didn’t touch her, but instead seemed to part around her. The inky black void of her existence bled around her, leaving dead grass and a black handprint on the headstone. “Do you think they can be broken this way?”

Nicki hummed and drew the collar of his jacket up a touch more. “Anyone can be broken, Aeron. It’s just a matter of how you go about it.” He cast a glance up to the sky, where the lightning leapt from cloud to cloud in erratic bursts. The thunder wailed constantly overhead, like bursting sobs that could rip a throat in two.

But it all seemed far away -- all but that constant, all-encompassing smell of ozone -- as he stood before this headstone and across from his long dead sister.

“What do they have left, after this?” asked Nicki, spreading his hands. The rain splattered his vision and Aeron blurred for a brief moment. Just long enough for him to see the decade younger woman that he’d buried in the north.

“Themself,” replied Aeron. She ran her forefinger across the headstone. “You.”

“Precisely,” said Nicki. He tugged his fingers through his hair and flicked the water back, irritated. He could have washed it all away, twisted himself into an untouchable entity. But the less solid he was, the less likely Aeron was to appear. Besides, Gertrude always told him -- them -- that they should remember the ways of regular people. That a little taste of their everyday would keep them grounded, if not humble.

_Humble._

As if that were even possible, at this point.

“How long do they have?” asked Aeron, raising her eyebrows at Nicki. She looked perfect, beautiful and ageless despite having aged in Nicki’s mind. Not a hair out of place, not a blemish in sight. Inhuman, in the way only a body in a casket could look.

Completely unlike the body he’d buried.

“If the others are anything to go by…” Nicki trailed off and let his mind leap into the Web, dancing through the blown apart pieces that marked the victims of Entropy, years prior. “A few weeks, perhaps a month.”

“And what will you do, then? When you lose your perfect victim?” she asked.

Nicki grimaced at the word. _Victim._ He wasn’t victimizing anyone. Nat had made their choice, just as he had. He’d simply… offered the best one available. And soon, when Nat made themself known again, when they were sick of feeling sorry for themself, Nicki would extend that hand again. And this time, he’d take exactly what he needed and give exactly what they wanted.

That wasn’t victimization.

That was business.

“More to the point,” said Aeron, picking up a strange mix of Gertrude’s Korean accent and Nicki’s English. “How will you stop them?”

“I have my ways,” he replied. There were many, but only a few would work on someone so powerful. To kill Nat would be to invite havoc. When Radcliffe had succumbed to Entropy, she’d destroyed city blocks, killed thousands of people, and created a crater in Veda that still no one dared to touch.

The centre of Red Light, and the centre of all darkness in Veda, if Nicki’s assumptions were correct.

But, more than that, she’d skyrocketed the number of active Metas in Veda and across the continent in her death. What would happen if Nat, arguably just as powerful, went down?

Or could he bring them down the same way he’d brought Aeron down with Gertrude?

Could he even do it alone? To someone with such a different power than his own?

“You have no idea, do you?” asked Aeron.

But he did. He did. He did.

He just didn’t want to admit what he’d have to do in order to save the city.

Nat Carter was dying. Even as he spoke to this spectre, Nat Carter was dying. The God of Thunder, the number one Alpha of Veda, the most powerful Meta since Taryn Radcliffe, was dying.

What would rise from such ashes as this other than an uncontrollable monster?

“Who’s to say?” he replied. He stared at the headstone a while longer, saying nothing. Aeron remained at the edge of his vision, the inky black of her existence spreading even further, until it created a shield that blocked him from the rain. In that fold of shadow, he began to dry. All except for his feet, which clung to the soaking, green grass, tinted grey by the weather.

“She would have hated this,” said Aeron. And Nicki couldn’t be sure what she meant -- the headstone or the side-by-side discussions of Aeron and Nicki, when Gertrude had done her best to separate them, if only to spare Nicki’s heart when Aeron fell.

“She would have,” he agreed. “Too gaudy.” Referring to the headstone. “Too sentimental.” Referring to himself and Aeron.

“You’ve changed,” said Aeron, her voice soft and almost mourning in tone. “You didn’t used to be a monster.”

Nicki shrugged. “We become who we’re meant to be.”

Was this his own guilt and regret, asking him what he was doing? Was this his grief of Aeron and Gertrude and Taryn? Was this the result of his complex feelings over what he was going to do to Nat?

He couldn’t say.

Nat didn’t deserve what was coming, but a controlled fire was better than an uncontrolled inferno, was it not?

“No, we became what she told us to be,” replied Aeron. _Gertrude._ Was there really such a bitterness in his soul over her? He loved Gertrude. Had loved her. Still did. She raised him to be who he was. Raised him to understand his destiny. Raised him to save the city, the Metas, the world.

No, he didn’t think she was wrong. Perhaps he was bitter over what he could have been, but really, who wouldn’t be?

Most days, none of these questions plagued Nicki, and he was content with his existence. If not happy with who he was, then at peace with it.

But something about this day, with the air smelling of ozone and the sky weeping in grief, with the thunder booming its cries and the lightning like flickers of hope, with Aeron at his side and Gertrude’s headstone before them, left him uneasy.

He shook it off.

“You don’t understand anything about this,” said Nicki, casting a glance to Aeron.

She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t I?” she asked.

Thunder boomed overhead and a streak of lightning cut through the sky, erupting light behind Aeron. Nicki flinched, eyes closing against the light.

When he opened them, Aeron was gone, but the handprint on the headstone remained.

Nicki shook his head, and shook off the doubts, and settled back into the skin he had always known. He let the threads comb through his body, dragging his withering soul with them. The Web resettled around him, folding its concepts and connections into his vision.

Nat was captured. Nat was dying. Chase had lost her way. The friends had no idea what was going on. Sanctum loomed in his mind, immense and impenetrable. Shielded by what had to be a creation of Gertrude’s, before her death, and a blank slate of shadow in Nicki’s mind. Like the void that surrounded Aeron. Like the emptiness of Nat’s mind.

It taunted him.

But his plan was coming to fruition. And within a month’s time, he’d have everything he needed, whether Aeron, piece of what remained of his conscience she was, approved or not.

He turned and walked from the graveyard, head bowed against the rain and hands deep in his pockets.

Thad had once told Nicki that if he’d left the business, if he’d joined Thad’s parish, they could have ruled as Gods, side by side.

But Nicki had no interest in being a God, false or otherwise. Gods gave hope. Gods gave options. Gods gave love and expectations and salvation.

He offered none of those things. Only damnation by his own hand.

No, Nicki had no interest in being a God. He hadn’t in years. Instead, he’d learned what to be interested in at a kitchen table, a decade prior.

The man with the options, the monster with the answers. The shadow with an extended hand, offering false promises of safety.

The demon at the crossroads.

* * *

  **Nat Carter**

_Now_

Nat watched the sunrise, slow and smooth, over the Rockies, from where they sat upon the roof of a skyscraper in Central. From here, they could see everything. The fires, the sirens, the surging traffic, and even, faintly, the smoke from a riot in Red Light.

To their left, not far from them, Fiyero, ex-Apostle of Fabulon, sat smoking his third or fourth cigarette. They smelled vaguely like cherries mixed with nicotine. Must have been flavoured.

Behind them, Nicki watched, silent, but his presence was heavy. A firm weight between their shoulders that refused to let them go.

“You’re going to start a war,” said Fiyero, his voice breaking the strange not-silence of a morning filled with sirens and chirping birds as they fled from one fire after another.

Six in total, now. More to start in the future.

Nat had done nothing more than stand against the most powerful known psychic in the city and walk away unscathed. Was that really so impressive?

“Aren’t you worried?” asked Fiyero. “The city will want your head before nightfall.” He frowned at Nat and lit up another cigarette off the end of the old one, before flicking the still-smoking butt off the roof. Nat hoped it didn’t hit anyone. “Besides, you just broke out of Sanctum and now you’re making waves. Seems a little ballsy, if you ask me.”

“SOLDIER will be busy with this so-called war, MERCY is looking for me in all the wrong places.” Nat shrugged. “I’m not worried.”

Fiyero shook his head. “Hell of gamble.”

Nat only hummed. It wasn’t, not really. After Sanctum, this was nothing. Getting out of Sanctum was the hardest part of their plan, so far, though Nat suspected the other half of that idea would be much, much harder.

Electricity crackled against their skin, alert from the windmills in the nearby shallows turning in the growing wind. They winced and looked away from Fiyero and Nicki, trying to hide the grimace on their face. Their vision flickered, like a dying fluorescent light.

_How long?_

“They’re calling you Beelzebub,” said Fiyero, looking sideways at Nat. “The devil to Fabulon’s god.” He shook his head and gave a low chuckle, before taking another drag of his cigarette.

“And so it goes,” murmured Nat, shaking off the sparks that clung to them like an unwelcome second skin. First Thor, now the devil. A shift in faiths, and in perspectives. Could they balance both? A devil, bent on destruction and fire, and a warrior, bent on conquest and light?

Perhaps the two weren’t so different. Thor had fought wars, slaughtered thousands by his hand and hammer. He was a conqueror, a fighter, a destroyer, even if he was a prince.

Was that not the devil, in essence? A fighter. A destroyer. A conqueror.

A prince.

_Perhaps._

The sun rose slowly, its golden light etching across the mountains before it dared to peek across the city. Nat watched it come, silent as their thoughts tumbled around one another. Each vied for attention, clambering to be the loudest, the brightest. The darkest. For all that effort, Nat was left only with a headache, and too many ideas that refused to make sense.

They needed sleep. But would it even come? Nine months of nightmares. Nine days not knowing what would come next. Had it only been last night that they’d escaped their latest hell, only to fall into another? It felt like a lifetime ago.

Nat looked at their hand. The healer had managed well, despite what Nat had assumed, and only scars remained. Crisp, lighter lines against dark skin. Brilliant and jagged. And the lightning, soft and angry, burned beneath those scars, begging for release.

Ever since the storm, their capture, nine days ago, that energy had burned against their blood, begging for release, for expulsion.

For death.

But powers or no, Nat couldn’t figure out how to set it free.

Nicki shook his head, barely in the periphery of Nat’s vision. He’d been speaking, but Nat hadn’t heard. Now, they heard the end of what he said.

“I’m not sure I understand you.”

_You and me both._

Nat shrugged, slow and measured. “I thought you wanted me to cause chaos.” They looked at Nicki, eyebrows raised. “Is this enough chaos for you?” Nat gestured out to the city. Half a dozen fires burned, smoke billowing into the sky as it fought to block out the rising sun. Sirens of all sorts screamed in all directions. Below, there was chanting, just inside the long range of Nat’s hearing.

Electricity at their fingertips. Nat drew back their hand and clasped them together between their legs.

_No, not yet._

“I suppose,” said Nicki. He glanced at the sunrise and frowned. “I should be off. Places to be, worlds to conquer. You understand.” He gave a wave. “I’ll be back when I can.”

Nat scoffed, bitterness flowing through them, molten and black. Ozone on their tongue alongside their words. “Of course you will.”

“Not all of us are free from the burdens of responsibility, dear Nat,” drawled Nicki. He spread his hands. “Do try and stay out of trouble, yes?” Without awaiting a response, he snapped his right thumb and fingers together, and vanished.

Moments passed, perhaps a minute, before movement alerted Nat to anything more than the rising sun. Fiyero flicked his cigarette butt from his fingers, letting it sail off the roof and down toward the streets, and took a seat next to Nat. Within arms’ reach, but not touching.

Nat wondered if Fiyero knew what they could do to him. If he knew they didn’t need contact to do it.

If he knew how hard it was _not_ to do anything, with the storm in their skull and their chest, raging endlessly.

“You know,” said Fiyero, leaning forward so that his arms rested on his thighs. “I thought I’d hate losing my spot as number one Alpha, but it’s pretty great.” He looked at Nat and raised an eyebrow. “Though, being told that ‘my fire pales against the brilliance of such lightning’ hurts a bit.” Fiyero’s eyes danced with the fire within his soul, revealing images that twisted and curled within his pupils, almost like memories. Nat could have stared for hours, at those eyes, trying to uncover his secrets.

They hummed in response to his chattering, returning their attention back to the rising sun and smoke. Two of the fires were out already, but more would start soon enough. To think, all they’d had to do was walk into a club.

Metahuman Dispersion Theory, Zoe had only told them. The idea that when a Metahuman reached a certain threshold of power, their power exuded in other ways, such as through manic energy, charisma, a feeling of good or bad karma in an area, etc. These feelings and vibes would then press onto the people around them, and spread further and further. While the effect was lessened the more people it spread to, it could start riots, public breakdowns, etc. And if that dispersed energy was then fueled by anxiety, paranoia, mania, etc., of other sorts, it could create a sort of feedback loop, where it continued to disperse without ever losing effect, because the energy was no longer the source’s.

Fascinating stuff, and a good indicator of why things tended to escalate so quickly around Nat. It was in their very nature, their very aura.

Fiyero sighed, leaning back on his hands and staring up at the changing colours of the sky. “You know, I’m trying my best, here.” He cast a sideways glance at Nat, who furrowed their brow. “Perhaps I should have started off simpler. Hi,” he stuck out his hand, “I’m Fiyero.”

Nat rolled their eyes. Mockery, certainly. They didn’t touch his hand. They hadn’t touched anyone, not since Giovanni.

The blood remained. The lightning clung to it.

The threat of death, injury, lingered behind both.

“I know that.”

He frowned and dropped his hand. “Look, I’m not exactly sure what to say here. No one knows anything _about_ you.”

That wasn’t true. There were people who knew a great deal about them. Or had, before all this. People who Nat had been willing to do anything for. But was that true, anymore? Last night, they’d felt a presence. A friend. But when no one had stepped forward, no one had made themselves known, and Nat had been left to wonder if they’d sensed anything at all.

“Half of this city thinks you’re either a god or a demon,” continued Fiyero, oblivious to Nat’s internal turmoil. “And then there’s the chunk that thinks you’re the Ghost’s right hand.”

Nat growled, electricity sparking across their temples and leaping across their hair. It crackled loud in their mind, like a gunshot echoing through their skull. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I work for _Nicki._ ”

“Work for, work with, what’s the difference?” asked Fiyero, pulling another cigarette from the pack in his pocket. He offered the pack to Nat, who took one.

They snapped their fingers in tandem with Fiyero, both of them igniting their cigarettes with their powers. Fiyero with a flame, Nat with a spark of electricity, tamed to ignite but not destroy.

Harder and harder to do with every passing day.

“If you have to ask, you’re working for him,” said Nat, taking a long drag of the smoke. The familiar tang of nicotine and death lingered against their lips and soothed the bitterness on their tongue with a different one. The sickly taste of cherry mixed with both, turning it to bitter candy.

The smoke swirled in their lungs, twisting around until they exhaled. Fiyero exhaled a moment later, the smoke curling in the air and forming into a bird, which flew a few feet before it dissipated.

“Fair point,” said Fiyero. He let out a low sigh. “But there’s something to be said about the lesser of two evils, you know?”

Nat watched the dredges of the smoke, eyes narrowed. “You can control smoke?” they asked, not looking at Fiyero. They didn’t bother to acknowledge his comment. Nat didn’t know Fabulon. Didn’t know if he was more or less than what Nicki both claimed to be and actually was. It didn’t matter. Neither one of them could control Nat. They were immune to psychics, after all.

 _And how hard would it be,_ the treachorous voice in their mind asked, _to simply wipe them out, if they went too far?_

Nat shook it off. It wasn’t important, they told themself. It wasn’t necessary.

No more blood on their hands. They already couldn’t see through it, most days.

“Smoke, fire, the occasional steam.” Fiyero shrugged. “Room temperature and non-contact temperature.” He grinned. “We’re both Alphas, aren’t we? At our level, a power description is less ‘paragraph’ and more ‘dissertation’.”

Nat snorted. “True.” They pressed more smoke into their lungs, letting the bitterness and sweetness, a strange combination that echoed their conflicting thoughts, warm them in a way the rising sun couldn’t or wouldn’t.

“Can I ask you something?”

Nat gave Fiyero a flat look. “You can _ask_.”

“Why do you need an army?”

Nat smiled, crooked and sly. This, they could handle. This, they knew. _This_ , they had planned for nine fucking days in Sanctum, piecing together everything they’d need to take the city to its knees. If it went well, if it all worked out, then Nat would have everything they needed before the Entropy got any worse.

They wouldn’t fall and leave nothing behind. Death was coming, but like hell Nat wasn’t going to finish what they’d started before it took them.

“I don’t.”

Fiyero stared. “Then why--”

Nat cut him off. “I walked into a club in the middle of the night on a _Thursday_ and turned the city upside down.” They gestured to the world around them. “Six fires, more starting. Riots and marches, gangs rallying their forces and weapons. And at the centre of it? The psychic of Veda, running scared from an outsider.” Nat couldn’t help the toothy grin, cruel and hungry, that tore their face in half. “I don’t need an army. I need the fear of what I could _do_ with one.”

Nat shrugged and inhaled as far as they could on the cigarette, burning it down to the filter. They flicked it off the roof and exhaled, tasting the bitterness of a death that could never claim them, and pleased when Fiyero shaped the smoke into the silhouette of a screaming face. “It opens the city to chaos, to destruction, to overlooking everything.”

Nat shrugged, the gesture smooth and jagged at once. “It’s just the first piece in the puzzle.”

“So it’s all a trap,” said Fiyero, his eyes growing wide and awe in his voice as he realized what Nat was saying. “All of this is a trap for something bigger.” His voice was almost a whisper.

“Precisely,” said Nat, smirking.

Fiyero frowned, other pieces falling in his mind, by the look in his eyes, but none of them clicking. “But for who? Why?”

Nat grinned and got to their feet. “Stick around, _El Diablo_ ,” they said, holding out a hand. “And I might just tell you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... are y'all excited as I am?


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of trigger warnings for this chapter, so let's put them here:
> 
> tw for anxiety, anxiety/panic attack, disassociation, intrusive thoughts, self harm, disorientation, accidental misgendering, broken bones, blood, violence, and hospitals.
> 
> Theme for this chapter: [Panic Switch by Silversun Pickups](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgzOcb8T-04)

**Nat Carter**

_ Nine Months Ago _

_ Run. _

The streets were dark and light, dark and light. Overhead, the buildings spiralled up and up into the air. They loomed, teetering on the edge of balance and overbalance, ready to fall at the lightest breeze.

_ Run. _

Lights. Flashing and bright, then dimmed and dark. They swirled overhead. Like gunfire.

_ Run. _

People flashing by, a thousand colours and a thousand voices. Shouts and curses, questions and concerns, comments that meant nothing. Were nothing.

“Who was that guy?”

“Hey, lady, you okay?”

“What the fuck was that about?”

_ Run. _

Screaming sirens. They wailed. Following. Were they? Was anything real? Buildings overhead. They screamed and loomed; watchful, waiting. They wouldn’t leave Nat alone.

_ Leave me alone. _

_ Leave me alone. _

_ Leave me alone. _

The human body was nothing but electric signals. A computer. A storm. Capable of being controlled, manipulated, puppeted. Paralysis was nothing.

_ Focus. _

Screams. Sirens? People? Shouting. Lights. Nothing held. Images and flashes of memory blurring into reality. Was that Judah? Was that Daisy? None of these people were real. Silhouettes meant to hide the darkness, but growing it instead.

_ Focus. _

The human body was a soundboard for electricity. At its core, the heart. The heart was the key. The brain was another system. Incomprehensible.

“What the fuck was that?”

“Was that lightning?”

“Did you hear about the diner?”

The diner. Daisy. Three men dead at Nat’s hands.

_ It was an accident. I didn’t meant to. _

_ It doesn’t matter. _

**_Focus._ **

Had that been hours ago? Or days? Weeks? Months? How long had they been running? The city wasn’t real. Shadow puppets and light shows meant to distract from the emptiness. Everything was electric. Hooked into one system that screamed information at the speed of light. Lightning went almost as fast. Heat mixed with light mixed with power. The streets. The veins. The bodies. The city. The heart. Where was the heart? Make the heart silent and everything else went with it.

_ Focus. _

The human body was a soundboard of electricity. The core. The heart. The city was a body. A body filled with cells. All moving toward one purpose. Away and toward the heart. Where was the heart? Where was the heart? Silence the heart. SIlence the veins. Let the blood flow. The noise would stop.

Please, God, make the noise  _ stop. _

_ I didn’t meant to. It was an accident. _

Three men were dead. Blood on their hands that they couldn’t escape from. Everything swirling and twisting. The heartbeats of millions of people thrummed under their veins.

“That was lightning!”

“Is she okay?”

“Woah! Super speed!”

“Do you need help?”

_ Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. _

_ No! Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. You’ll die. They all die. _

_ Everyone. _

_ Everyone. _

_ Everyone dies. _

Blood on their hands. Shouting. Screaming. Sirens. Everything bending. Lightning flying. Mind of its own. It ripped through their body and into the streets.

Things shattered. People yelled. Were they hurt? Of course they were. That’s all Nat could do. Hurt people. All they did was hurt people.

Daisy. The cooks. The truckers.

_ They deserved it. They deserved it. They deserved it. _

_ No! No one deserves to die. _

_ Yes. No. Why? Why me? Why me? Why me? Why  _ **_me?_ **

**_Focus._ **

The human body was nothing but electric signals. Nat was their puppet master. Their pied piper. They could do anything with a person. Make them dance. Dance to the beat of their own heart. Dance until they broke their bones and tore their muscles.

What was free will but the ability to run?

_ Focus! _

Judge, jury, executioner. Judge, jury, executioner. Judge. Jury. Executioner.

Executioner.

Executioner.

Blood on their hands. Blood on their face. Blood in their mouth. Three men were dead. Daisy. Was Daisy okay? What would happen to her?

Had they left enough money?

That poor cook.

What if someone else was in the blast radius?

How many people were dead by their hand?

_ Foc-- _

**_Run._ **

Nothing would hold. Nowhere was safe.

Judah wanted Nat to succeed. Judah had taught Nat to survive. She sent Nat on a mission and Nat had already failed. Failed. Failed. Failed.

They couldn’t go back. Never go back. Psychics at their mind. Picking at the static.

What was real? What was theirs?

Was their lightning enough?

No one was safe.

Not even them. Not even Judah.

**_FOCUS!_ **

The illusion broke in pieces. The world filtered. A bar stool. A bar. Quiet. Lights dim. Everything soft.

Where were they?

How long had it been?

In pieces, memory. A boy, dark and curly. His soft eyes. A pizza box. Empty moments later. Had they eaten it all?

_ Focus. _

A man, standing behind the bar. His hair dyed dark blue. Or maybe it was real. Mutations. Parahumans.

_ Focus. _

Nat looked up and there was water in front of them, sealed. They drank it. They shouldn’t have. It could have been poisoned. But they were so thirsty.

So thirsty. So thirsty.

How long had they been falling?

Windows to the left. The sun, rising. The sky, pink and orange. Dawn. Had it been a whole day since the diner? Or had it been longer?

The news, faintly, in Nat’s ears, whispered through radio waves in the air. Nat breathed.

_ Focus. _

The noise stopped. The world went silent.

Nat looked up and found a basket of bread. The man with blue hair that was maybe natural and maybe dyed smiled. His body language was open. His expression easy. Professional liar? Unlikely. Nat was here for a reason.

The heart? No. Safety.

They’d found sanctuary.

Sanctuary.

The name loomed above the bar, against the wall. Curly letters and soft yellow paint. Chipped at one corner. Not pristine.

Nothing in here was pristine.

It was. Lived in.

Used.

**Real.**

_ Focus. _

The bread vanished in fragmented flashes of awareness until the hunger clawing at Nat like a monster faded away and turned to a stone. It weighed them down and held them to the chair.

Nat breathed. In through their mouth, out through their nose.

They looked up. The man cleaned a glass. He raised an eyebrow. A question. Nat managed a nod, every inch of them aching and exhausted.

“Hey,” said the man, his voice soft. A low rumble, like rocks turned by a gentle stream. Safety. Was he safe? Was Nat losing their mind?

_ Trust your instincts, _ Judah had said. Trust your instincts. This was instinct.

This was trust.

_ Sanctuary. _

“Hey,” Nat croaked. Their voice cracked on the word and Nat breathed, closing their eyes for a moment and exhaling through their nose. They opened their eyes. The world filtered more and more into their awareness.

TVs in the corners, on but muted. The bottles of alcohol behind the man, gleaming and polished. The empty booths and tables. The various posters on the wall. “Safe Space” one read, “queer friendly”. Nat cracked a smile at that one. Barely an upward twitch of their lips, but a smile.

“I’m Cobalt,” said the man, nodding to Nat. “Most people call me Cole.”

Nat swallowed. Give and take. Give and take. Give. “Nat.” Take. “What is this place?”

“This would be our little brewpub,  _ Sanctuary _ ,” said Cole. He nodded to the man in the corner that Nat only now saw. Small and soft. Korean, they guessed. His hair dark. His lean face infinitely soft behind oversized, black rimmed, square glasses. “That’s Gabriel, most people call him Gabe.” He stared at Nat for a long moment. Thinking. Nat could almost feel it.

Could they feel it?

The human body was an electric soundboard. A computer. An organic hub of electricity. The brain was a system of another calibre. If they could feel, hear, sense heartbeats, could they sense minds?

They’d never been around enough to know.

“Are you all right? You came in here looking pretty rough,” said Cole.

Nat pinched the bridge of their noise and breathed.  _ Breathed. _ “Yeah. Just not used to cities.” Give. “I’m looking for something.” Take.

“Maybe we could help,” said Gabe, getting up from his spot. He crossed the space, silent enough that Nat narrowed their eyes. Metahuman? Surely. But what kind.

Or a dancer.

Or maybe Nat was just that out of it.

What was real? What was fake?

Had the psychics already picked them clean?

How long had they been out?

“You know how to find things?” asked Nat. Gabe and Cole looked at each other. Nat knew that look. That was the look of two people who could communicate without words.

Psychics? They tensed.

But.

No. They had different expressions. These men had television expressions. Lovers. They were lovers. That had to be it.

“It’s our specialty, though my father is better,” said Gabe, after what could have been seconds or minutes. What was time, but a construct to those connected to the living? How connected were they, now?

Judah had prepared them. But had Nat been prepared?

Not at all.

Not in the least.

_ Focus. _

“I could take you to him, he’s downstairs.” Gabe’s voice. Nat blinked.

Downstairs? Since when did brewpubs have basements? What was a brewpub, anyway? A bar? A club? A restaurant? Did any of them have basements? Nat didn’t know.

You didn’t build basements when the ground was frozen eight months a year. You built storm cellars and root cellars. Nothing people could stay in, long term. Nothing comfortable.

“Sure,” said Nat. What did they have to lose, anyway? They had their lightning. This city was a playground, if they held it at a distance.

Distance was key.

What could they do to Nat? Nat was immune. Nat was safe. Nat had their lightning.

_ The human body is a soundboard of electricity. They are nothing to you. _

Nat shook their head. “What’s his name?” they asked.

Gabe smiled. “Lucius,” he said, “Lucius Grey. Come on.” He gestured for Nat to follow him to the back, and Nat did. After all, what did they have to lose?

* * *

  **Chase Steele**

_ Nine Days Ago _

The arrest was anything but textbook. One moment, it had been fine, the next, Madden had shot an innocent man. Giovanni Vacilli. Ally, friend, entrepreneur, on the ground and bleeding to death. In the aftermath, the paramedics got to him in time, but they all said the same thing.

Nat had shocked him. Maybe damaged his brain. But saved his heart.

Chase sat alone on a couch, staring at her hands that she had, palm up, in her lap.

Had Nat meant to do that? Had they sensed he was dying? Or was it another product of their slow and terrible death? Chase didn’t know. She felt she didn’t know anything, anymore.

Nine months ago, when Detective Benjamin Madden approached Chase and offered her this job, this way to study Entropy with the promise of helping people, Chase had aligned it with her own plans, her own needs. And as those needs adjusted, she’d shifted her plan so that it would hold together.

But none of it worked. Now, everything she’d striven for was collapsing around her, and all Chase could do was cling to the remains that kept her from being crushed beneath her own failure.

Nat was dying. Madden had gone mad. Giovanni could be brain dead.

And it was all her fault.

If she’d listened. If she’d asked. If she’d known. If she’d just been able to climb inside heads, like a normal psychic, or if she’d thought to track Nat with what she could do -- but no, Nat evaded psychics like no one else ever had. Even if Chase had been smart enough, she could have never known.

Or at least that’s what she kept telling herself.

The door opened to the small room Chase was in and Chief Ramirez stepped in, his hands in his pants’ pockets.

“Carter’s in custody. Heading for Sanctum right now,” he said. “Good work.”

Chase nodded and swallowed.

“Vacilli is in a coma. Surgery was quick, painless, but the brain damage is bad. No idea how bad until he wakes up,” he continued.

Chase lifted her hands, but they were shaking too badly to sign, so she grabbed her text-to-speech box and punched in her shortcuts to get the words out.

‘Are we going to tell them about Vacilli?’ she asked.

Chief Ramirez shook his head. “No. No reason to. Carter’s ignorance works to our advantage.”

Chase furrowed her brow. ‘They were friends with him.’

“Friends?” echoed Chief Ramirez. He shook his head again and spread his hands. “Ms. Steele, I’m almost always willing to listen to your suggestions -- you know that -- but in this case, I don’t think you’re being impartial.” Chase frowned. What did he mean by that? “Carter didn’t have  _ friends. _ Recruits, minions, underlings, maybe. But not friends.” He smiled as if everything he said was pleasant. “Look at what they are, Ms. Steele. They’re barely human.”

Chase swallowed.  _ Barely human. _ It was a slap in the face. A strike across her cheek that left her eyes stinging. She blinked, clearing tears from the verbal slap, and took a breath. In through the mouth, out through the nose.

Just like Nat.

Barely human. She’d heard people whisper that since she’d first met Nat. How their power destroyed their humanity. How they only saw people as tools. How they cared about nothing and no one except themself and their own goals.

It wasn’t true. It wasn’t even  _ close _ to true.

But they  _ were _ hiding something. And maybe they did have recruits running around. Since Entropy had settled itself deeper into their mind, Nat had started to sound strange, acting like there was something much, much more important than when they’d first come to Veda.

But what was it? Why had Nat started hiding things from her? And, more importantly, what was going to happen to them now?

A million questions. No answers. And all Chase wanted to do was go  _ home. _

“Ms. Steele,” said Chief Ramirez, clasping his hands at waist level. “I’m sure you understand how sensitive this case is. Carter is one of the most dangerous Metas in the city, and at their level of Entropy, it is of the utmost importance we get them into a Storm Cell as soon as possible.”

Chase didn’t look at him. She stared at her lap and clutched her hands together until her knuckles went white above her knees. One breath. Then another.

_ “Just keep breathing,” Nat said, their voice soft and their hand on her shoulder. “You’re going to be okay. It’s just a thunderstorm. They can’t hurt you.” _

_ Chase stared at them. ‘How would you know?’ she signed. _

_ Nat laughed, smiling brightly. “Because I’m the biggest storm I know. And when have I ever hurt you?” _

Above her head, thunder boomed. The storm was fading, almost as if the loss of Nat in its grasp had destroyed its hold on the city. Tears welled in Chase’s eyes but she refused to let them fall.

Nat was dying. It didn’t matter how hard she’d tried. It didn’t matter how much she searched. There was no answer to Entropy. Nat was going to die, and all Chase had done was hand them over to the authorities, so they’d die alone, in a cell, instead of taking the city with them.

But was it the right thing?

Chase didn’t know anymore.

Right now, she couldn’t even remember why she’d joined MERCY in the first place. Once, she’d known. Once, she’d had a plan. Once, she’d thought she had all the answers. Now, nothing seemed to hold. Even her powers wouldn’t work. No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t find anything to grab on to. So she was stuck in her own head, stuck in this moment, no matter how much she wished she wasn’t.

“There is one another thing.” Chief Ramirez’s words sliced through her mind, sharpening her focus on the present. Chase wiped at her eyes and looked up, taking a steadying breath. “I want you to take over the Carter case.”

Chase’s heart dropped into her stomach, the acid splashing into her lungs and suffocating her. She sucked in a sharp breath and felt it burn all the way down.

“You know Carter better than anyone, and your training has been sufficient. Besides, we’re shorthanded.” He smiled at Chase, ease and light. “You understand, right?”

Despite herself, Chase nodded, fearful of what would happen if she said no.

“It’s for the best,” said Chief Ramirez, laying a hand of Chase’s shoulder. “Madden isn’t stable anymore and no one else is as familiar with the case as you are. I appreciate your help.” He left the room before Chase could fully process what he’d said.

She sat there, staring at the wall, mouth open and eyes dripping tears she could no longer stop.

Silence. Horror. The sound of her heartbeat. Chase breathed but found she didn’t want to.

The door burst open and Zoe ran in, shutting the door and dropping onto the couch next to Chase. She slid an arm around Chase’s shoulders and rested her hand on Chase’s arm, leaning in close.

“What happened?” she asked. “Where’s Nat? Where are the others?”

Chase looked up at Zoe, her vision blurring until everything warped together. Quietly, with shaking shoulders, she began to sob.

* * *

  **Nat Carter**

_ Nine Hours Ago _

The dim cell offered little information about the world, beyond. From the journey in, Nat knew they were underground, perhaps two stories, and that the place was heavily guarded. But after the cuffs were clamped to their wrists, to match the collar wrapped around their throat, they’d lost all awareness for the weaponry, the technology, the surveillance. As if they were blinded, left with a missing sense, Nat could only scream internally and let the anger build up until it was a raging inferno, churning their very blood.

It had taken days for the tranquilizers to wear off. No resistance, the doctors had murmured, because no drug had ever made it into their blood before. Nat had sneered at them, anger crackling with every blink, every bared tooth. None of them had been impressed.

Nat wished they were. No one in this damned place was worried about them, scared of them. Not in the way they were used to, at least. They kept their distance, treating Nat like a patient, an experiment, rather than a proper monster. But the nervousness lingered. No one ever came to them alone. No one ever lingered close. They were careful not to give Nat any mental. Nothing sharp, either.

Nat didn’t know who the guards thought they would hurt: the guards or themself. Frankly, Nat didn’t know, either. They went back and forth: hurting the guards, the doctors, would bring short term pleasure. Vindication. It would burn the fear back into their eyes. But it would increase the guards, the protocols, and Nat would lose what few holes there were.

But, on the other hand, hurting themself could prove useful. The scars on each arm, tucked into the crook of their elbows, attested to that. Pain brought adrenaline, focus.

Power.

Collar or no collar; cuffs or no cuffs; enough pain could, in theory, bring back their lightning.

It had done it before, nine years ago, before Nat understood what that lightning was. Before Nat understood what they were. Who they were.

Nat knew the doctors probably figured that trauma would do  _ something _ . It was the only thing that made sense. Nine days of questioning, drugged and undrugged. Nine days of observation. Nine days of silence.

But violence, danger,  _ torture _ , could gain them everything they ever wanted. Could give Madden words when nothing else would. But, it could destroy what hold they had over Nat.

Not that Nat had seen Madden since that night. Since the gun.

Since…

_ Focus. _

Was Giovanni alive?

_ Focus. _

Sliping. They could feel themself slipping. The world falling out of focus. Everything shifting and breaking at the edges. Gunfire. Blood. Electricity. The sounds of the city. The storm, wailing overhead.

_ FOCUS. _

Nat breathed. In and out. Without their powers, it was easier to grab hold of reality. Without their powers, it was hard to find a reason to try. Without their powers, they were nothing.

They needed them back.

But no one had given them the opportunity.

No Madden. No interrogators. Nothing but regular cops, asking regular questions. SOLDIER, they said. Nat didn’t care.

Where was Madden?

And where were the psychics, the telepaths, the mind breakers? Surely, Veda had a healthy supply of them. Hell, Nat knew there were even a couple powerful enough to make waves in the massive megapolis. Were there none that could tap into Nat’s mind, even with the power blockers in place? Did that part of their ability still work, despite the lack of lightning in their veins?

Did they simply not employ telepaths at all? What about empaths? Or just plain old grifters? Cold readers?

It made them curious, how this place broke people. Did all Metas react the same to torture? Or only the ones whose powers were born from pain? Would powers born from other sources not wake up in the face of death or injury?

Or maybe it was the collars and cuffs, designed by the smartest damn woman in the whole fucking city. Maybe they were all specially made. Maybe Nat wasn’t special, but just the latest in a long line of insubordinate outsiders who refused to let the city breathe.

Maybe everything they’d done was for nothing.

Maybe they should have never come to Veda.

Alone, in their cell, these questions haunted Nat. Haunted them until they seemed to fill the tiny space. Nat wanted to lash out, to push them back, to force them through the little slot their food tray came through, three times a day. But thoughts weren’t physical, not in the way that mattered.

All they could do was keep breathing.

Just keep breathing.

_ “Hey, just breathe, all right?” Derek’s voice was smooth and sure. “You’re gonna be okay.” A hand on Nat’s upper back. So few people touched them when they were scared. “You’re always telling us to focus on our breathing when we’re scared. Come on, time to do the same thing.” _

_ “I think I’m dying.” _

_ “...What?” _

_ “This is Entropy, isn’t it?” The stars were brighter. The lights were out. The edge of the city loomed. “This is how it ends for every Alpha.” _

_ “We’re not gonna let you die,” said Derek. “There has to be something.” _

_ “There is.” Nat looked at Derek. “I need you to promise me something.” _

_ “Anything.” _

Nat looked up from where they huddled in the corner of their cell. Tears slipped down their cheeks, unchecked, but something else slipped through them as well, cutting the pain, the isolation, into a thousand fragmented shards.

_ There _ , at the edge of their awareness, it teetered.

_ Lightning. _

There was a storm coming.

Somewhere above them, far above their cell, back in the city, there was a storm brewing. Even here, two, three stories underground, they could feel it. The way the hair on their arms stood up, the way the air in their lungs got thick with ozone. They way their heart echoed distant thunder.

Nat caught themself grinning, crooked and hungry.

Even now, in cuffs, in a collar, underground and contained, they could feel the storm.

Just like they had, nine days ago, when they’d first been taken.

Nat sucked in a deep breath, letting the ozone linger in their lungs.

It was time to prove their theory true. If trauma, if pain, could bring back their powers from nothing.

Nat flexed their hands and prepared their mind, steeling themself for what was going to be one of the worst things they’d ever done. The cuts on the insides of their elbows had been for clarity, for control. This was for neither. This was for raw, unfiltered power. The kind that would bring this building to its knees.

That needed more than fingernails breaking skin.

That needed the clarity, the desperation, that only broken bones could bring.

Another breath. Another flash of memory.

_ “You’re stronger than you think,” said Judah, smiling at them. _

And then, nine years after that.

_ Al chuckled. “You really think that little of yourself? Nat, come on. You’re the strongest person I’ve never known.” _

Funny, how two people so different could be so similar.

They wondered what Al was doing. They wondered what Nicki was doing.

They wondered what Chase was doing.

Betrayal and pain reared in their heart and their gut, bringing the roaring to their ears within seconds. Nat growled, low in their throat.

They were ready.

Nat bit down on their tongue and cheeks until they tasted blood. Copper and bitter and filth from a week without brushing their teeth. They spat the blood into the corner of the cell and did it again and again until the hints of electricity crackled against their skin. Not quite real. Not quite there. But the smell strengthened. Ozone and copper and ash.

They exhaled.

Nat splayed their index finger and thumb as far apart as they’d go, revelling in the way the hint of electricity burned into their skin, leaving the smell of ash and ozone behind. They breathed deeply through their nose, the air catching in their lungs and shuddering on the way out.

If this didn’t work…

But no. It would. It would just take time. Time and tolerance.

Nat took another breath and steeled themself. If they cried out. If they made any noise. It would all be over.

One last breath. In between their clenched teeth, out through their flared nostrils. Nat splayed all their fingers of their left hand open, keeping their gaze on the webbing between their thumb and index finger.

They leaned forward, tucking themself into a small ball with their back to the door. Mouth open, Nat slipped the delicate webbing between their teeth, and reached out with their other hand to grasp their pinkie finger.

In the same instant, Nat bit down as hard as they could on the webbing and snapped their pinkie against the back of their hand.

The  _ crack _ reverberated through their entire body. Nat fought a scream.

The skin of their hand and the blood filling their mouth muffled their shout. Tears slipped down Nat’s cheeks and they breathed hard through their nose. The smell of blood filled the air, and with it, ozone.

The sparks on their fingers didn’t ignite.

Pain blurred the edges of Nat’s vision as surely as tears. Their hand throbbed. Their pinkie screamed. Their blood pounded and pulsed, already discolouring the broken finger.

Nat took another breath and positioned themself to do it again. This time, their ring finger slipped into the fist of their right hand.

_ Again. _

Bite, blood, snap, hold.

Nat blacked out for a second, pain roaring through the veins, an unchecked monster. And  _ there _ , with it, just below the surface.

_ Lightning. _

Nat reached for another finger and took a deep breath.

_ Fuck you, Chase. _

Their middle finger snapped.

* * *

  **Nicholai Stavos**

_ Now _

Giovanni Vacilli had been given a private room at the Veda Central Intensive Care Hospital. Perhaps it was due to the internal injuries he faced, or perhaps it was because of his wealth and status, or perhaps it was because he was witness to an ongoing, high profile case. Regardless of the reason, Nicki was grateful. Staying hidden from technology was much simpler than with people, and after the past two weeks, he needed the break.

Did he need sleep? Maybe, maybe not. Exhaustion came and went with the changing of the wind. But there were times when he wanted sleep, when he  _ missed _ sleep, despite having spent the last few years without it.

Regardless, he didn’t have time for it today, and instead of resting, or recouping, he sat upon the low, mildly comfortable couch that rested beneath the windows of Giovanni’s room. Giovanni’s bed was set up in front of the couch, with the man, himself, comatose beneath its sheets.

Hospitals, much like most of Veda, were far too bright for Nicki’s liking.

They left no room for guesswork or confusion. No places to hide when things got tough. Nowhere to look when you prayed.

Nicki’s fingers went to the cross around his neck. He gripped it tightly. For most, light brought hope, opportunity, belief.  _ Faith. _ But for Nicki, it was much the opposite. The lights had never been his friend, and these sorts of lights least of all.

They stabbed at his eyes and his mind, prying at memories he had clamped down tightly long ago. He closed his eyes and held himself perfectly still, willing the images away.

He almost wished Aeron would appear. If only because her strange, void shadow always seemed to dim the lights around her, regardless of their source. That darkness would have been a comfort, at the moment, despite its source. But maybe that was the point. The spaces between the webs were shadows of ink and void, were they not? If the Web and webs were solid connections, you’d never been able to tell the pieces apart.

Light could exist without darkness, yes, but without shadow, light lost its definition. Its edges.

And those edges were oft the only parts of the light that mattered to Nicki.

“Oh, Giovanni,” murmured Nicki, staring at him. He clasped his hands in front of him and bowed his head, debating prayer. It wasn’t as if it mattered. God didn’t listen to people like him. People who destroyed everyone for the sake of no one. 

But the gods did, those who dared to step down to Earth, to be tainted by such things as corruption and man. Those gods listened, if he begged long and hard enough, if he whispered their hymns and tasted their blood. Those gods had listened before. They would listen again.

_ “Don’t get caught. And never, ever, trust those beneath you. They are tools, Nicki. Not allies.” _ Gertrude’s words, oft repeated inside his own mind, sometimes in his voice, sometimes in hers, sometimes in Aeron’s, sometimes in Thad’s, and recently, Nat’s. Though he knew they’d never spoken them, nor anything close. Nat didn’t believe in using people, or they hadn’t. But Entropy changed people.

Perhaps that was why their voice had started to weigh on his conscious.

Nicki glance to his right, toward the wall Aeron was mostly likely to appear leaning against, if she were to appear. But there was nothing but a plain, beige wall and some bland, yet tasteful, art of a field of sunflowers. Nicki shook his head.

What had become of him, hoping that she’d appear? Even despite knowing that she never did, when he was pulled this far from the physical world. Invisible, untouchable, invincible, even. Not one person in the city could find him, while he was like this. He’d know. They’d tried. SOLDIER, MERCY, the army stationed in the city, every single person in Black Tower had tried.

They’d tried to find him just as much as he’d tried to break into Black Tower. But, just like with Sanctum, there was a shield over it. Only this one was stronger, deeper, and he knew it wasn’t Gertrude’s doing. No, the shield around BT was something else entirely.

Something that he couldn’t break.

Which was, in fact, one of the reasons he now sat in this hospital room.

The list of pros to killing Giovanni Vacilli was longer than his arm. Dozens of reasons, opportunities, and avenues that all led toward his goals. He was a strong, brilliant man. His death, at the hands of both a renegade MERCY officer driven mad by Metahuman Dispersion as well as the very Entropic Metahuman that had caused all this trouble to begin with, would turn him into a martyr. And martyrs gave weakness to the opposition, strength to the rebellion.

Dead, Giovanni would bring the city into chaos in a way Nat couldn’t manage by themself. Dead, Giovanni would unhinge Nat in ways that Nicki couldn’t, on his own. Dead, Giovanni would destroy the hearts and minds of thousands of people whose lives he’d personally touched since VaCorp’s conception.

Dead, VaCorp would become a holding of Titan Industries. Its clean technologies would become victim to the weapon manufacturing of the Titan monolith. Titan would turn VaCorp into an unbreakable shield that would shatter any foe against it, and turn itself into a piercing sword to drive at any foe. Untouchable, Veda could, would, rise as a world power.

But that wasn’t the long game, no.

Dead, Giovanni would do a great many things, many of which Nicki would manipulate for his own gain. Many of which he could puppeteer for years and years to come.

Alive, Giovanni was just another injured man, a victim of an Alpha he’d defend to his dying breath, just like he did with Taryn.

Nicki sighed. “You and your bloody strays, mate,” he muttered.

Dead or alive. Dead or alive. That was why he’d walked away from Nat and Fiyero, despite knowing Nat was on the brink of destruction, despite wondering what the  _ hell _ they were up to. An army. What the hell did they need an army for, anyway? Nicki had no idea.

But this, this he knew how to handle. Giovanni’s brain damage was monumental, Nicki could see that in the way his threads frayed and split, in the way they tore away from the world. Even if he did wake up, he’d never be the same. His brilliance destroyed, his brain damage a sign at how badly Nat had shocked him. MERCY would suffer.

Dead, Giovanni would rise, a phoenix. Alive, he’d sink, ashes of the man he once was.

And that was why Nicki was here, in this damnable, bright room. To play judge and jury.

But not executioner, no. Not today.

Call him sentimental, or weak, or any number of words Gertrude might have used. That he might have agreed with, in any other circumstance. But Giovanni was different. Giovanni had always been kind to him, offered him anything he’d needed, when Nicki had dared appear to him. And, when Nicki was younger, before he’d vanished for good, he’d met Giovanni more than once in the VaCorp R&D department when Gertrude pulled him from place to place.

When Gertrude had done the wipe, she’d left enough behind for Nicki to restore, and once she was gone, he’d returned Giovanni’s memories to him.

His one connection to the world. The man who’d taken in both Entropic Alphas, both number one monsters of Veda. The man who saw a demon and offered him tea, rather than brimstone and damnation.

Judge, jury, and miracle worker, today. Not an executioner. Not for him.

Nicki took a deep breath and got up. He settled himself in the chair, next to the bed. Probably put there by a nurse, or else by Tony, Giovanni’s husband. Strange, that he wasn’t here, at the moment, but Nicki assumed he was with SOLDIER, being questioned. They always did things the long way, taking days and days to question people. But with Nat’s escape leaking into the city rumour mill, SOLDIER would be here, questioning if Tony, or Giovanni, had anything to do with the escape.

Shaking his head of the thoughts, Nicki turned his full attention to Giovanni. He centered himself, allowing the Web to fade from his vision as he pulled himself deeper into the shadows. For what he was about to do, he needed to completely disconnect from everything except Giovanni.

He’d never attempted anything of this caliber, before.

A breath. Then another. Then a third. Nicki reached out and splayed his fingers against Giovanni’s forehead. He closed his eyes and, when he opened them, he hung, suspended, in the shadows between webs.

Every person had a personal web, it was something Gertrude taught him when she’d first shown him the depths of his power. Every person, every object, every  _ thing _ had its own web. Past and present folded together, there, and the future was extracted therefrom. The Web, the true Web, was merely the connections of every single individualized web across the history of mankind. And, if you spent long enough in it, spent enough time digging, you could leap from connection to connection, making your way back in history, to the very beginning.

And that was the key: the connections. Without those, nothing worked. Without those, you couldn’t travel. Without those, the bits and pieces of what made an object, an object, or a person, a person, couldn’t form into one cohesive part.

Fragments.

That was what Giovanni’s mind had become. Nat’s shock had severed and fried most of the connections in his mind, leaving him pretty much brain dead.

And that was what he saw, now. Images, memories, traits, objects, people, all separated and free floating in the vast expanse of Giovanni’s mind. They floated, twisting around one another, sometimes bumping into one another, sometimes flying in opposite directions. What connections were left were weak and limp, loose.

Connections in the Web were simple enough to manipulate. You pulled a thread from one individual web to another. Out in the vast scope of existence, an individual web was represented by a single entity, like a dot representing a sprawling metropolis.

But down here, in a single web, inside a single mind, the connections weren’t the thick threads he was used to. No, they were like real threads, thin as hairs and ten times as delicate. One mistake on this level could destroy a person, forever, especially considering he was the only one who could get down this far. If he messed up, Giovanni would be worse than dead. If he pulled too hard, Giovanni could end up suspended inside the Web forever, doomed to be aware but never awaken. A sort of hell Nicki wouldn’t wish on anyway. He’d spent days inside the Web, before. You ended up staring at the void, sooner or later, rather than the Web. And then, the void started staring back.

In the end, you always blinked first.

Nicki stared out at the vast, fragmented mind of the one person left in this world who genuinely believed he was a good person.

He took a breath.

He had to try.

Nicki allowed his awareness to spread. He slipped between fragments, free floating within Giovanni’s mind. Some fragments were fractured, but their identities remained. Those were simple enough to pull together. And when he touched them, he saw what they contained.

The first time Giovanni met Tony, when he was in Italy, and they’d grabbed for the same loaf of bread at once.

His first invention, a simple, automated waste system that allowed the elderly to avoid bending down to pick up pet waste.

Talking to employees, laughing with friends, studying in college when he was just thirteen. Falling in love. His wedding. His honeymoon.

Nicki blushed and kept going.

Thousands of memories flickered by. Connections to people. Interactions. Items that he held personal connection to. Locations.

All of it spun and spun as Nicki found the edges of the threads and pulled them together. Like sewing. Piercing threads through cloth and tugging them back into order. A massive, tangled quilt of existence.

In the midst of it all was a massive golden thread which tethered Giovanni’s Metahuman power to his mind. Nicki didn’t touch it. He didn’t dare to even go near it. The effects, which he’d witnessed twice before, were not something he wanted to experience today. Energy theft and power consumption were dangerous, and even if he experienced it for only an instant, Nicki feared what Giovanni’s power would do to him.

Outcome observation was not to be taken lightly, especially not from the number twenty-three Beta in Veda City.

Piece by piece. Bit by bit. Memories, information, emotions, locations. All of them poured into Nicki as he swept through Giovanni’s mind, piecing it all together. He fell in love with Tony, alongside him, felt heartbreak when his parents died, alongside him, cried with him over Titanic, and laughed at the toasts at his wedding. All of it and more, turning the venture into an emotional rollercoaster that threatened to tear his heart from his chest.

And then.

Taryn.

Her brilliant smile, her freckles seeming to dance as she laughed. Her big, bold curls bouncing with her laughter. She giggled and danced and twirled with Giovanni, in his kitchen. Carefree and fifteen. The youngest Alpha. She cried when Giovanni officially adopted her.

She hid her eyes in horror movies. She slept with a stuffed sloth that had a big, dopey smile. She was impossibly, beautifully, hauntingly  _ human. _

And then she wasn’t anything, anymore, bursting like ash in Nicki’s hands when he tried to reach out and touch her.

And oh, did it hurt. Taryn, the beacon, the rising star of Veda, the poster child of Metahumans, dead. And all that came from it. All that came after it.

Nicki took a breath and reconnected it all, tears slipping freely down his cheeks as he did.

And those memories took him to Nat, broken and angry as they were. Hidden in shadows and growling at the slightest breeze. Feral from the day they arrived, and only worse as they fell. But Nicki felt Giovanni’s sorrow, his grief, as he saw Taryn in Nat. As he watched, in pain, this person who couldn’t survive on their own, not with their health, not with their panic. Nicki felt the way Giovanni fell in love with Nat in that way only parents could. Felt his joy when he was able to take them in.

And then.

_ Pain. _ The gunshot. Nicki gasped, awareness tearing through him. He felt the seat under his ass in the hospital room and forced it back, forced himself to focus. The pain roared as he connected the memory. He cursed and flinched back from it.

And that was it. Everything connected, from childhood to Meta power.

But still, he hesitated, not quite done. He stared at the memories of Taryn and Nat and wondered, as he stared, if it wouldn’t be better just to cut them out. Wouldn’t it lessen the pain on Giovanni’s heart? Would it not lift a massive burden from his shoulders?

But how many other people would he need to erase? How many other memories were connected, indirectly, to those?

How much more pain would it cause to take them? And would it be more or less than the pain of when Nat finally died?

He didn’t know.

Judge and jury. But not executioner. Not quite miracle worker, either. Just a person, but only barely, trying his best to save a friend he didn’t deserve to have, a friend he’d disappoint and betray before this was over.

Nicki blinked a few times and closed his eyes. He pulled away from Giovanni’s mind and stepped back into his body.

He opened his eyes.

In the hospital room, Tony sat in the chair on the opposite side of the bed, and while he couldn’t see Nicki, Nicki couldn’t help but feel they were connected. He reached out and laid his hand across Tony’s, which clung to Giovanni’s. Tony’s gaze didn’t move. Neither did his hand.

Nicki closed his eyes, took a breath, and folded back into the Web. There was work to be done, and he was running out of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is so much going on, right now. And I'm am SO EXCITED.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chase is missing something, and so is Derek, nine months apart from one another, yet connected in every other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been a few months, eh? Well, that's sort of how it goes, sometimes. Here's a chapter I've been working on for a long, long time, and only recently found the words to finish.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it. Reread if you've forgotten things ;P

Chase Steele

_Nine Months Ago_

Chase stared out the window of the office, images flickering by in her mind’s eye as she leapt around the city, finding people, animals, socialization. Laughter mixed with loving looks, soft words mixed with the touch of a lost friend, anger thrown around with the flailing of hands and voices. People in motion, as all things were in life.

She blinked, pulling herself back into her body. The cool touch of the window against her fingertips; the slight breeze of the oscillating fan behind her, which tickled the stray hairs of her bun against her cheeks. Air freshener, spritzing periodically into the room, as it mixed with the smell of old coffee and nervous sweat.

“Are you all right?” Dr. Higgins’ voice was gentle. Its faraway, dreamy quality added to the unreality of the situation.

Four hours ago, Chase and Zoë had been on their way to see what was going on with the new Alpha and the explosion at the diner. Now, she stood in Dr. Higgins’ office. The intermittent period? Lost. Four hours of her life, gone. Perfectly blank. She’d woken up on the couch, bleary and disoriented.

Still disoriented, in fact. She stood at the window and felt the pull back into the web of people and voices of Veda. It would have been easy – too easy, in fact – to fall back into that world and climb around other eyes and other bodies until she found what had happened to her.

But without an anchor to that moment in time, it was a hopeless endeavour. She needed an emotional anchor point to transport herself back to the moment of ignition, something she’d learned years ago.

“I understand your anxieties, Chase.” Her voice was still faraway. Further still, as Chase let herself drift into the street. Her eyes found the subway, and she traced it to the A-line, which was stopped.

She blinked.

Not stopped. Broken. Electrical lines bulged from the ceiling to leap and snap like snakes at civilians and emergency personnel alike. Tracks crackled with power that was barely held at bay by the barriers. The engine car of the subway, destroyed. The metal peeled back like the skin of a banana, revealing the warped and melted engine beneath.

Had it been manned?

Was anyone dead?

Was it connected to why Chase had a black spot in her day?

She frowned, drawing herself back into her body. Turned, found Dr. Higgins’ eyes.

‘Do you know what happened to the A-line?’ she signed, tilting her head to one side. She rubbed at one of her ears. Her hearing implants buzzed and crackled, something she hadn’t dealt with in almost nine years. The noise was giving her a headache and distorting some of what Dr. Higgins said. She’d have to get them fixed.

But what had caused it?

Dr. Higgins frowned. “No, no one does quite—" Lost words. A crackle. Chase grimaced and rubbed her ears. “—estimations are a massive power surge or some sort of leftover lightning from last night’s storm.” She drummed her fingers against the notepad upon her desk. The pen laid to one side, untouched. Analog, as always. Dr. Higgins believed notepads couldn’t be hacked or compromised, so long as they were kept in safes.

_But couldn’t the safes be hacked?_

Chase blinked a few times. Where had those thoughts come from? She wasn’t one to worry about security or technology. She’d never cared how Dr. Higgins kept her records, and she’d been seeing the woman for almost nine years.

Weird. Another effect of the blackout, no doubt.

‘No such thing as leftover lightning,’ replied Chase, her fingers hovering in the air. She turned her attention back to the A-line and narrowed her eyes. A frown marred her expression, etching deep lines into her forehead. A dull headache pounded in the depths of her brain; not behind her eyes, not in her ears, not in any one spot, but instead in the very _pits_ of her mind, thrumming with the beat of some lost rhythm.

A lost rhythm. Lost in the blank, four hours of her afternoon. Was Zoë in the same position? Was she talking to some anonymous therapist while Chase talked to Dr. Higgins? Was she in a hospital? Was she at home? Chase didn’t know where her phone was.

Chase felt the pull at the A-line again and let herself view the train through one of the rescue personnel. His confusion fluttered against her mind, tickling the depths of her lost memories. His task was simple: maintaining the barriers with his own power, a transmutation of inorganic material to rubber. It left him with time to think, and his thoughts echoed so loudly that Chase felt the reverberations despite her lack of skill with current thoughts.

His confusion tugged at her awareness. His mind wandering as he looked across the people on the platform, curled together and huddled under blankets as they were handed water and first aid and asked what happened to them. A great deal of them had no idea.

Their voices echoed through Chase, catching her attention and sucking away her breath.

_“What happened?” the personnel asked._

_“We don’t know,” they replied. “We don’t remember.”_

_“It’s blank,” they said. “It’s all blank.”_

She struggled to pull air into her lungs, trembling all over.

“Chase,” came Dr. Higgins’ voice. “You need to focus on this room, on me, not on the city. Turn around and face me.”

Chase turned. Nine years of obedience burned into her brain. She folded her hands into her lap and pressed her lips together, nostrils flaring as she regulated her breathing. They all had the same issue. Had she been on the A-line? Had she been in the accident?

But why was she here, instead of there? And how had she _gotten_ here? She’d come to, conscious and horizontal, on the couch in this office. The couch she now sat on.

‘Do you know where my phone is?’ asked Chase. She licked her lips, then nibbled at the lower one, then chewed on her tongue inside her mouth.

“No,” said Dr. Higgins, shaking her head. “Do you not have it with you?” she asked.

Chase started to shake her head, then paused. Had she checked? She patted her pockets and then checked her bag, but it wasn’t there. Neither was her watch, which she never wore, nor her extra pair of earrings. Nor her text-to-speech box.

All gone.

Almost like…

She checked her bag again.

The buckles were gone.

All the electronics, all the metal she’d had on her, it was all gone.

Chase sucked in a breath and shook her head. She set her bag on the floor and rubbed her hands across her legs, up and down, up and down, over and over as if it could soothe her.

“Chase,” Dr. Higgins’ voice was soft. “I’ve contacted Mera. She’ll want to speak with you about what’s happened, if that’s all right with you.” Dr. Higgins’ hesitated, opening her mouth to say something else, but was cut off by the gentle buzz of her pone against her desk.

She grimaced. “Sorry,” she said, “I should have realized it was still on vibrate.” She reached over and tilted her phone to look at the screen. Her face went white, all the colour draining in an instant. The buzzing from Chase’s implants seemed to grow louder as she watched Dr. Higgins’ mouth fall open, her eyes grow wide, and her chest twitch with what must have been a sharp breath that Chase couldn’t hear.

How much of her hearing was missing, right now?

Metal implants. It must have been connected to the missing metal in her purse. To the missing memories.

Chase cleared her throat to try and get Dr. Higgins’ attention. Then did it again, then again. On the third time, she finally turned and looked at Chase, still frozen in that moment of shock, as if she’d seen a ghost.

“I think I might know what happened to you and Zoë,” she murmured. She gestured to the small TV mounted to the wall. “May I?”

Chase nodded, slow and spooked. Moments ago, Dr. Higgins’ had wanted Chase to focus on her, on this room, on this time. Had wanted her to work with the now, not the _then_. Now, she had completely changed around. But why? What had happened? Was it the A-Train? Was it the missing memories of all those people?

The TV clicked on, subtitles scrolling across the bottom third for what Chase couldn’t hear.

The burst open and peeled back A-Train loomed, familiar but distant in that way seeing things through her own eyes for the first time always was, when she’d already seen it through others’. The people on the platform seemed even more haggard and terrified than in her mind. Their clothes charred, their eyes empty, many of them trembling or twitching as if…

As if electrocuted.

Chase sucked in a breath. The crackling in her ears was outdone only by the roaring. Obviously, it had been something electrical. Obviously, the A-Train was the central point. Obviously.

Except it _wasn’t._

The screen had shifted to show dozens of areas like the A-Train. Destroyed cars in intersections, electrical transformers peeled open like someone had taken a giant can opener to them. Fallen streetlights and stop lights, all crackling with electricity. Half a dozen rail lines partially collapsed. And the people, oh the people, all confused and dazed and some of them hurt but nobody _dead._ Not one person was dead. The bottom scroll kept repeating that, over and over, and it read as confused as Chase felt.

_“That’s right Jane, there have been no casualties despite the massive destruction that took place this afternoon,”_ the news reporter was saying. She was looking over the A-Train destruction, which was back on screen. _“Many injuries are reported, but we have eyewitness reports of electrical fields catching debris from the destruction, throwing people clear of their exploding cars, and much more. Footage is lacking, due to electrical interference, but this incredible story continues to unfold as more information is gathered.”_

Dr. Higgins and Chase looked to one another. Dr Higgins’ expression was very calm, almost too calm, like she was trying too hard to look like that. Chase imagined her face was askew with shock and horror.

She shook her head, trembling too badly to sign.

Dr. Higgins swallowed visibly.

_“While no official reports have been made,”_ continued the reporter, oblivious to the turmoil in the office, _“we have reason to believe that this is the Alpha we heard about this morning. Does this mean Veda City has a new number one Alpha? More as this develops.”_

No.

_No._

Chase shook her head, slow and continuous, trying to shake the thought free. But it wouldn’t budge. The very story she and Zoë had gone chasing had found them, instead. A new Alpha in Veda, and one with powers beyond anything Chase had ever thought possible.

This Alpha… they were more powerful than Monasterio, more powerful than Grey. Were they as powerful as Taryn Radcliffe had been, nine years ago?

And what did this destruction mean? Destruction without destroying. Violence without death. No one was dead, but people were injured. Collateral or purposeful?

The door burst open and Zoë stood there, her hair as wild as her eyes.

“Get up. We’re leaving,” she said.

Dr. Higgins and Chase stood as one.

“Zoë, I don’t think—” started Dr. Higgins.

Zoë levelled her with a look. “Is she being held?”

“Well, no—”

“Then let’s go. _Now_.” Zoë’s words echoed down into Chase’s soul, reverberating and setting something right within her bones. She grabbed her bag and hurried out, flashing a smile and a wave at Dr. Higgins.

In the hallway, as they walked toward the elevator, Chase cocked her head at Zoë to ask why that’d happened.

Zoë held up her phone. “Derek called me.”

‘You have your phone?’ asked Chase.

Zoë blinked. “You don’t?” Chase shook her head. Zoë shrugged. “Shit, that sucks.” She plunged ahead. “Derek called me, Chase. He called me and he sounded…” She shook her head. “He says he met them.”

‘Who?’ asked Chase, already feeling the dread of the only possible answer creep up her throat.

“The person who did all this,” said Zoë. “The Alpha.”

* * *

 

Derek Lehrer

_Now_

Derek awoke in the early afternoon, the sun shining through his open curtains and the apartment empty. He groaned, sitting up and putting his head in his hands. A deep, pounding headache settled in the back of his skull, clinging to the memories of last night and how he and Adair and Jackson had gotten out of the club and back home.

The memories were twisted and foggy, as if they were a window wiped with a filthy rag. Smudged, but not gone.

He remembered… Nat. They’d shown up in the club and stood against the Pied Piper, against his following, and pulled Monasterio onto their side. And he remembered Ghost. He remembered the spectre of Veda, appearing in the shadows, standing behind Nat, standing _with_ Nat.

And then they’d run and no one else remembered Ghost and the news reports in the middle of the night had talked about fires and riots and _Nat_ being a _monster._ But they _weren’t._ They weren’t. Derek knew Nat. He’d known Nat for nine god damn months.

They weren’t a monster, even if they were succumbing to Entropy, and Derek knew there had to be a reason why Nat was acting the way they were.

But what that reason was, he had no idea. Nine months was such a short time to know someone, even less for someone as secretive and terrified as Nat.

With a quiet curse, Derek pushed himself upright in bed. On his end table was a glass of water, slick with condensation, and a pair of white pills that had to be Aspirin. _Adair._ He must have put them there before he’d gone off to work this morning.

Derek tossed back the pills and drained the glass of water, before shoving himself to his feet and heading out of his room.

He padded down the hallway, rubbing at his eyes and yawning. The curtains were only half open, letting in far too much light for Derek’s pain addled brain.

He shuffled into the kitchen, only sort of aware, and turned on the tap, yawning.

Derek rinsed out the glass and froze, one hand on the glass, the other bracing himself against the kitchen cabinets. An all-too-familiar feeling crept up his spine and settled in the base of his skull, pulsating like a second heartbeat.

Awareness ripped through his mind and body, tossing the sleep and confusion aside even as his headache started pounding even harder.

The smell followed a moment later.

_Ozone._

“Hey, Derek.”

He dropped the glass. It bounced, unbroken and unmoving, once in the wet sink, then rolled and settled. He watched it, because the alternative was to turn and face down impossibility.

“Been a few days.”

Derek let out a shaky breath at the second phrase. The words were cracked through – ragged, and exhausted. Nothing of the person in the club the night before. Nothing of the monster Nat built themself to be around others.

He turned and found them, sitting in the armchair, legs drawn up to their chest and arms hugging them, chin resting on their knees. So small, so vulnerable, but still commanding an entire room. He couldn’t tear his gaze from them, from the shadows under their eyes, to the cut across their cheek, to the scars and bruises on their hand. Once his gaze found Nat, he couldn’t look away.

A magnet.

“Hey, Nat,” he replied, letting out a sigh as he leaned back against the cabinets, fingers gripping the counter and exhaustion gripping his soul. “Nine.”

“Ten, technically,” said Nat, shrugging. “But who’s counting?”

_You_ , he wanted to say, _you always did, though._

“Uh…,” Derek trailed off. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and closed his eyes, just so he could look away from them for a moment. Even with his eyes closed, though, he could still _feel_ them. Feel the pull of their electricity as it danced through the room, licking at the electronics and at his psyche. The electricity tugged at the hairs on the back of his neck, and a low hum entered his ears for a moment.

And then his headache was gone. Derek blinked his eyes open and stared at Nat. They stared at the floor, still tugged into a ball.

“Did you do that?” he asked.

Nat shrugged, not looking at him. “The human body is electronic signals twisted into purpose,” they murmured. “The brain is the hub, and its signals are merely tiny echoes of the larger voices.” They lifted one hand and snapped their fingers. The lights around the room went out, leaving only sunlight to illuminate the shadows of the apartment. “Simple.”

Another snap and they came back on, dimmer than before.

His apartment didn’t have a dimmer switch.

Derek let out a slow, shaky breath. The words only sort of made sense to him, partially because he didn’t understand biology, and partially because Nat was, well, _Nat._ They spoke in poetry and in prophecy, in metaphor and simile. They didn’t talk the way most people did, and never had. As if they were convinced that speaking plainly would somehow ruin the purpose of their words.

But the intention, the _meaning,_ in the phrase lingered beneath. “You can control people’s minds now?” he asked. His words were slow, hesitant. Nat was an electric meta. They controlled electricity. Metal, if they wanted. Internet and radio signals. But… minds? That was psychic powers. Nat wasn’t _psychic._

“No,” they murmured, still staring at the floor. “I know how to heal headaches.” They lifted their gaze and looked into Derek’s eyes, and then into his soul, so deep down that Derek though Nat could see his every thought, his every want and need. He shivered and forced himself to break their gaze.

Nat was his friend, but the tension in the room was thick, and he couldn’t shake the hesitation, the fear, that clung to him. It was the club, he told himself, it was just seeing Nat at the club causing this. But he knew that wasn’t true. Nat had escaped Sanctum. Nat had nearly killed Giovanni Vacilli (accident, but still). Nat’s Entropy grew worse by the day and Derek had no idea how much of who he was talking to was Nat, and how much was the emptiness that waited to consume them.

“You’re scared of me,” said Nat, staring over Derek’s shoulder. Derek jumped and sucked in a breath. Could Nat read his mind? No. He was just projecting again. “It’s okay,” they continued, watching him with soft eyes. “I’m scared of me, too.”

Oh, oh _no._

He stumbled out of the kitchen and dropped onto the couch in front of Nat, reaching out to put a hand on their knee. Static electricity leapt up his arm and lifted the hairs on it, before fading.

_How could he have ever forgotten who Nat was?_

“I’m sorry,” whispered Derek, his voice hoarse. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to make you feel that way.” He curled his fingers deep into the fabric of their jeans, staring into Nat’s dark and haunted eyes. “You’re still you, Nat, even if you did scare me last night.”

Nat tipped their head to one side. “Thought you were there,” they murmured. The two watched a little jolt of electricity dance across their arm, down their leg, and then onto Derek’s hand. It leapt, an arc in the air, both points on his skin. Derek shivered, but it didn’t hurt. It wasn’t strong enough to feel as more than a tickle. Just a memory of electricity, something to ground Nat. They’d described it once as being a way to track someone, to feel them in ways that Nat couldn’t, normally.

To understand those they were close to.

Derek smiled at Nat, soft and apologetic. “I didn’t step forward. Sorry.”

Nat hummed and gave a one-shouldered shrug. “You couldn’t have done anything.” Not a dismissal, but an acknowledgement.

He couldn’t have. He knew that. And yet, Nat saying as such left a hollow ache in his chest that had him cringing away from Nat, looking anywhere but at them.

“Right,” he murmured. “Of course not.”

There was another side of it as well: power. Nat, Fabulon, Monasterio, _Ghost_ – they were all powerful. Two confirmed Alphas, the number one Beta, and whatever the fuck Ghost was. He was just a low levelled psychic with no real control over his own bullshit abilities.

What could he possibly do to help?

“How long do we have?”

Derek blinked at Nat’s words. _What?_

They clicked a few seconds later.

“Adair’s at school and Jackson’s at work so…” Derek let out a slow breath. “Couple hours?”

Was Nat planning on staying that long?

He looked at Nat, but they wouldn’t look at him.

“Why are you here, Nat?” asked Derek. He hadn’t asked that, yet. That should have been the first thing he asked.

Stupid.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Nat nodded, still not looking at Derek. They twisted their hands together, watching the electricity dance across their knuckles. Derek watched, as well, rolling it over in his mind. Scars, fresh in the last week since he’d seen Nat. Where’d they gotten them? _How_ had they gotten them?

Why were they working with Ghost? And where was he now? Was he also in the apartment?

He could be standing next to Nat, next to Derek, even. Would he even know? Everyone else had forgotten Ghost’s existence at the club, but was that a memory wipe or something more sinister? Had that been a show of power? What about the technology Ghost would have had to manipulate?

Did he simply erase himself, wherever he’d been, or did he show himself last night for a reason?

“Nat…” Derek hesitated. A thousand questions lingered on his tongue, but he couldn’t find the breath for one of them. How could he ask Nat about a man that shouldn’t exist? About powers Nat shouldn’t have? About a break-out that made _no god damn sense_?

He sighed. “I don’t even know what to ask you,” he mumbled, bringing voice to his thoughts as he brought his hands up to cover his face.

“No one ever does,” replied Nat. They shifted on the chair, cross-legged now instead of curled up, and straightened up, only to slump against the back of the armchair almost immediately. “Great thing about being me,” they said, voice so bitter that Derek could _taste_ it.

Or maybe that was just the ozone that wouldn’t leave the air. Sharp and bitter in a way that nothing else in Derek’s life was.

Long after Nat was gone, his clothes were going to smell of ozone.

_Long after Nat was gone._

No, he needed to not think about that. Nat had _time._ Nat had plenty of time.

They still had their mind, didn’t they?

_Didn’t they?_

Or was that wishful thinking? How much did he really know about what was going on with Nat? They wouldn’t talk about anything; they wouldn’t talk to him about _themself._

“Nat,” said Derek, sighing, softly. “You know you can talk to me, right?” He shifted on to his feet, wincing as pain from sleepy ankles met him, and hobbled over to sit on the couch. “Whatever you’re going through, you can talk to me about it.” He clasped his hands together in front of him, arms resting on his knees. “Please, talk to me.” His voice came out hoarse, far hoarser than he’d meant.

He watched Nat with misty eyes. Nat narrowed their own gaze at him and frowned.

“Do you know what the world looks like to me, these days?” asked Nat, sounding all at once very far away. Derek shook his head. Nat leaned back in their seat and stared at the ceiling, head lolled back and eyes unblinking. “I see connections. I see signals. I see the nervous system of every person I look at. I see the kill switch in every piece of technology. Metal calls to my tongue, radio waves to my ears. Nothing looks as it once did.” With every word, Nat’s voice grew hoarser, until they sounded as though they were swallowing road gravel.

Derek gulped, trying to imagine what Nat was describing, but he couldn’t fathom it in the least. All he could see, as he watched this broken person whisper to the ceiling, was the terrified and wide-eyed person he’d first spoken to, nine months ago. He saw the first time Nat had given him their name. He saw Nat’s curiosity over Zoë. He saw the laughter and the crying and the conversations on rooftops they were too drunk to be on.

_“What if I fall?” Derek had asked, staring out into the abyss._

_“I’ll catch you,” Nat had replied, laughing, and they’d thrown back their head and howled at the moon. Both of them drunk on life and whiskey._

But who was going to catch Nat as they fell?

Him. It was going to be him.

If Nat would let him.

“All I can see is how I can change something,” whispered Nat. “How I can manipulate it. What are people, if not circuit boards? What are weather patterns, if not prophecies of lost gods? What is this city, if not one massive, overpopulated orchestra of chaos?” Nat exhaled, slow and shaky and audible. “What am I, if not a conductor to bring this symphony to its peak? To it’s _knees._ ” The word was a low growl that had Derek jumping.

“You’re… you’re not going to destroy the city, are you?” asked Derek. He blinked a few times and clasped his hands tight together. “Nat, this is our home.”

Nat lolled their head forward and stared at Derek with vacant, glassy eyes. They blinked, sluggish and confused. Derek swallowed.

It was like Nat didn’t even know he was _there._ Didn’t know who he _was._

He fought the urge to flinch, to run.

“Home,” whispered Nat, voice just as faraway. “Yes, I suppose you could call it that.”

“Nat…” Derek trailed off.

Nat blinked.

One moment, glassy, far away eyes. The next, focused once more, the gleam of _Nat_ back in their gaze.

Chase had warned him about this. About the division of the body, mind, and self as Entropy set in. Not a form of DID, which was very different, as it was once believed, but instead a division of the very essence of a person. Some theorists believed Entropy to be a sentient entity, seeking out the body and destroying it. Others believed it to simply be a poison. Still others, a breakdown of cells.

There weren’t enough cases to know for certain.

Derek doubted there ever would be.

“Do you trust me, Derek?” asked Nat.

Derek swallowed. “Of course,” he said, and he did, even watching as who Nat was and who they were becoming collided and fought behind their eyes. “With my life.”

Nat nodded. “Thank you,” they replied.

Silence, one minute, then two, then three. Derek had no idea what to say. He was running on limited time and he still was clueless as to Nat’s predicament.

Eventually, Nat broke the silence.

“Mind if I shower?” asked Nat, getting to their feet. Derek followed suit and nodded, tugging his fingers through his curls.

“Yeah, yeah. Go for it. You’ve got clothes in my room, bottom drawer,” he gestured, vaguely, down the hall. Nat knew where everything was. They nodded and vanished down the hall and, a minute later, he heard the bathroom door shut and the shower kick on.

With a sigh, Derek thumped back into the chair and tilted his head back, his hands over his face. He let out a low grown and cursed.

Why the hell did his life have to be so complicated?

Nine months ago, everything had been fine. Then, he’d handed a pizza to a person without shoes and now… well, now he had a known criminal in his _shower_ who was _sad._

What was he supposed to do?

He had no idea how to handle Nat. No idea how to handle Entropy. He couldn’t exactly call up Zoë and Chase and ask them what to do. He didn’t even know whose side of this whole mess Chase was _on_ anymore.

Fucking hell, man. He just wanted to protect Nat. He wanted Nat to be okay. But was that even a possibility?

Or was he just setting up to make their death and destruction as comfortable as possible?

A knock at the door drew his attention from his thoughts and he stood, panic and electricity racing down his spine with equal fervor.

_What?_

He threw a look over his shoulder, down the hallway. The shower was still running. He sucked in a sharp breath and got to his feet, creeping toward the door. Maybe if he didn’t make any noise, they’d go away?

Another knock, louder this time. Zoë’s voice rang loud and clear from behind the door.

“I know you’re in there, Derek. I can track your phone.”

He cursed under his breath and scooted over to the door, unlocking it and pulling it open only partway.

Liesel and Zoë stood on the other side. Liesel looked, as always, perfect, and Zoë looked like her usual half-together self. His chest panged at seeing Zoë, her eyes in shadow beneath the poof of her curly hair. They were haunted, dark in a way he hadn’t seen in years.

He didn’t ask if she was okay. They didn’t ask either.

He just stepped aside and let them in, against his better judgement.

“Wanted to talk to you,” said Zoë, looking around the room. Liesel sniffed a few times, eyes narrowing. Derek doubted she could tell the smell. As far as he knew, only he and Chase could track Nat’s scent. A strange trick to possess, but a few useful one.

“What about?” asked Derek.

“Do you have someone over?” asked Liesel, casting a glance down the hallway, toward the bathroom.

“Oh? Uh, yeah, just a neighbour. Water’s out so they needed to borrow the shower,” said Derek, looking back down the hallway as well. He was careful to keep himself light and flippant. If he focused too hard, tried to cover up too much, Liesel would see right through him.

“Uh… huh,” said Liesel, slowly. _Shit_ , did she believe him?

Of course she didn’t. _Body language analysis._

Derek crossed his arms. Defensive. Who cared? He didn’t.

_He did. He so, totally, absolutely did._

“I wanted to ask you about last night,” said Zoë, pulling out her phone. She wouldn’t look at him. He didn’t blame her. Half of him wanted to hug her. The other half wanted to punch her in the face.

And not just because they were twins.

“Last night?” echoed Derek. Panic skittered up his spine. What did those two know about last night?

“The club,” said Zoë, tapping at her phone. “There’s not a lot of information out yet, but we know it was a couple of powerful Metas. Some people are saying Alphas were involved.” She hesitated, pressing her lips together. “And then there’s the matter of Sanctum.”

Derek played dumb.

“What about Sanctum?” he asked.

Liesel narrowed her gaze at him. _Yikes._

“There was an explosion. Officials say they have nothing to report, but it’s consistent with the club attack.” Zoë tapped at her phone as she spoke. From where Derek was standing, he could sort of see what she was looking at – news sites. Huh. She’d always called them propaganda, before.

“And,” said Liesel, still glaring – seriously, when did she decided she hated him? This was new. Warranted, all things considered, but new – “it’s consistent with _Nat._ ”

“What?” asked Derek, hoping he sounded sort of surprised. “Nat’s in Sanctum.”

“Duh, dumbass,” said Zoë, shoving her phone in her pocket and putting her hands on her hips. “That’s why we came here. We think Nat broke out.”

“That’s impossible.” The words were clumsy on his tongue. Even without Liesel around, he’d always been a shitty liar. Fuck.

Liesel bumped Zoë’s shoulder and nodded down the hallway, frowning. Zoë frowned in return.

“Who’s in the shower?” asked Zoë, eyes narrowing as she turned her gaze back toward Derek.

Subject change? Except no, they were both geniuses. And Derek _so_ wasn’t.

“A neighbour, I told you,” said Derek, shrugging with one shoulder.

“No,” said Zoë, folding her arms. “See, that doesn’t make sense. The water is fine in your building.” He went to protest, only for Zoë to add, “I checked.”

His jaw clicked shut. Of course she fucking checked. It was nothing for Zoë to deep dive the maintenance on his building and realize he was lying.

“Which means you’re lying, Derek,” said Zoë, scowling.

“Who is in the shower?” demanded Liesel.

Derek backed up, ready to run, ready to fight, ready to yell. Ready to do anything that didn’t involve Liesel and Zoë facing off against Nat in his apartment. He was pretty sure these two were at the top of Nat’s hit list, if Chase hadn’t already made that spot.

A cough from behind Derek drew the attention of the three to the hallway. A man stood there, a towel around his shoulders, his hair damp, and his tank top and black jeans very out of place. He was covered in tattoos, in minute burn scars, and in silver jewellery.

Derek blinked.

“Hi there,” said the man, grinning. He rubbed the towel through his hair, bleached palest blond through most of it, but the roots a quarter of an inch grown in and black. He grinned at them, easy and bright around the dark facial hair he had, cropped short but covering his whole face.

Derek blinked again, trying to figure out who the _hell_ this wet guy was. Where he’d seen him…

_Monasterio._

“I was hiding out here,” said Monasterio, shrugging. “Asked him not to tell anyone I was here, since you know, kind of ditched working with a known criminal.”

The girls stared. Derek forced the surprise down in his chest and thanked _whoever was listening_ that it wasn’t Nat that’d come out of his hallway with a towel around their shoulders.

“I asked Derek if I could hide out here,” said Monasterio, still smiling. “I owe him a favour, anyway, so this makes two.” He winked at Derek. Derek nodded, a fast, sharp jerk of his head.

“Hey, what’s one more?” His voice didn’t quite crack, but it was close. Liesel narrowed her eyes at him and said nothing. Stupid body language analysis. Made it damn near impossible to lie to her. But… could he get away with it if he didn’t know, really, what the hell was going on?

Zoë and Liesel looked to one another, eyes narrowed and expressions skeptical, but there was something in both of their eyes. Something that made the hair on the back of Derek’s neck stand up.

“You could have told us the truth,” said Zoë, sounding hurt.

Derek bristled. “Really?” he asked. “You’re going to say that to me, after all that? After accusing me of hiding Nat?” Nevermind that he was, he was _angry._ At everything Zoë had done in the last few months. “After everything you’ve hid from me?”

“It was for your own good,” said Liesel. “We—”

“Fuck you,” Derek threw at her, scowling. Where was this _coming from?_ He was angry, yes, but not _this_ angry. And he liked Liesel, even if she was a pain.

And…

Electricity against his spine. Ozone thick on his tongue.

These weren’t his feelings. They were _Nat’s._

Well. _That_ was certainly new.

And something he had no idea how to handle.

What the fuck was going _on?_

Liesel stared at him as if he’d grown a second head. He swallowed and tried to calm himself. The lightning in his spine wanted a fight.

The shower was off. He didn’t know if it’d kicked off before or after Monasterio had shown himself.

_Where the fuck was Nat?_

“Guys, stop,” said Zoë, lifting her hands. “Derek, we just came to ask if you knew where Nat was. You’re right, we shouldn’t have gotten mad.” She sighed and yanked her fingers through her curls with enough force to make Derek wince. “We’re all stressed. I’m sorry. I should have… told you stuff sooner.”

_Or at all_ , he didn’t add. Because Zoë’s apologies were empty so long as she was still keeping everything a secret from him.

But he wasn’t in the mood to argue, not with the number two Alpha in the city next to him. Not with Nat maybe hiding in his apartment. Not with the knowledge that his anger wasn’t his own. That he couldn’t control it like it was his own.

“How about I leave you guys alone,” said Monasterio, smooth and easy. He tossed the towel onto the counter and flashed finger guns at the trio. “See you around, Derek.” He winked and headed out of the apartment, thumbs in his belt loops and a tune whistled on his lips.

Derek blinked. Was he flirting or a distraction?

“So, you don’t know where Nat is?” asked Liesel.

Derek scowled. “No,” he replied. “I’m not their keeper, you know. They don’t come to me for everything.”

Just most things. Just dangerous things.

Just the times when Liesel was around to call him on his bluff.

She didn’t. He couldn’t figure out why.

“Okay, thank you,” said Zoë. “We’ll go now.” She turned and headed for the door, pulling Liesel with her, but Derek called out for them to stop.

“Wait,” he said. They did, turning back toward him.

Zoë, Liesel, and Nat, all accounted for. Chase was probably with the cops. Giovanni was in the hospital.

That left one member of their little group unaccounted for.

“Do you know where Al is?” asked Derek, hugging himself. “I haven’t heard from him since we all got cuffed.”

Zoë sighed. “Derek… Al didn’t get cuffed,” started Zoë. Derek sucked in a breath, eyes wide. “No one could catch him. He slipped SOLDIER and took off.” She shook her head, lips pressed together tightly. “No one’s seen him since.”

Derek shook his head as well, slow and smooth, trying to focus on the emotions that roiled through him. Al had escaped? He thought that Al was cuffed, too. SOLDIER had said they’d cuffed all of them. All of ‘Nat’s little criminal friends.’

When had that changed?

“And you haven’t heard anything?” asked Derek, his voice broke as he spoke. “Nothing?”

Liesel put a hand on Zoë’s shoulder and shook her head as Zoë looked at the ground. “Every tracking tech out there can’t find him. He’s just vanished.”

Derek levelled Zoë with a sharp look. “You sure you didn’t build a failsafe in all that shit for him, too?”

She cringed and looked out the window, eyes in shadow. “You weren’t supposed to find out about that.”

“Hard not to, when Jackson knows.”

“He wasn’t supposed to know, either!”

“Then how did he?” asked Derek, eyes narrowing.

Zoë looked at him. “Same way anyone knows anything they shouldn’t know, especially about tech.”

“Nat,” said Derek, voice soft and flat. He let out a sigh. It didn’t surprise him. Maybe it should have, but it didn’t.

He wondered if they were gone. If Monasterio was, then Nat probably left with him. No way they wanted to be spotted by Zoë and Liesel. Plus, being seen with him would make things… complicated.

Very complicated.

Probably why Nat had sent Monasterio out, anyway.

How they knew how to contact Monasterio, or where he’d been hiding out, or how Nat had contacted him from inside a shower, Derek didn’t know.

“Right,” said Derek, “thanks.” He didn’t mean it.

“No problem,” said Zoë. She didn’t either.

“We’ll be going now,” said Liesel. And this time, Derek didn’t stop them.

He watched them go, and when they shut the door, he crossed the space and locked it. Then, he leaned his forehead and palms into the door, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.

_Fuck._

“I forget, sometimes, how nosy those two are.” Derek jumped at Nat’s voice and turned, eyes wide, to face them. Nat leaned against the wall on one shoulder, arms folded loosely across their chest. Their hair was damp and hanging around their face, their clothes swapped out for the ones Derek had hidden under his bed. A tank top, black and loose fitting, and a pair of jeans, dark blue and worn at the knees.

All of it revealed the scars, bruises, and scabbed over wounds on their elbows and collarbone, as well as the massive tattoo down their right arm. It was a storm, an amalgamation of clouds, thunder, lightning, and a burning forest. The full sleeve featured three main colours: black, reds and oranges, and shades of blueish grey. It had fascinated Derek since the first time he’d seen it. Left him wondering why, exactly, Nat had such a detailed tattoo of a thunderstorm and a burning forest. Wondered why the lightning seemed so… alive against their skin.

Stupid question, really. Nat was lightning brought to life, after all.

“I can’t believe you’re still here,” said Derek, exhaling slowly.

Nat shrugged. “Do you have my jacket?” they asked.

“Yeah,” Derek combed his fingers through his hair. “I… fuck, Nat.”

Nat cocked an eyebrow at him. He hesitated for a second. This, right here, was familiar. This was Nat has he’d known them before Entropy started to eat their brain. In the horror of everything going on, he couldn’t help but revel in that moment of normalcy before plunging back into hell, headfirst.

“Do you know where Al is?” he asked.

Nat nodded. “Probably where I asked him to go,” they replied.

“And where’s that?”

“How many more secrets do you want to know, Derek?” asked Nat, raising the other eyebrow.

Derek faltered. How many more _did_ he want to know? He already knew Nat was on the run, that they had come to see him, that they’d spoken to Al, that they were working with Monasterio.

That they were working with _Ghost._

Mother _fucker._

“What’s one more?” he asked, a bitter twist to the words he spoken in panic, earlier. He shuffled across the room and slumped against the kitchen counter; eyes half closed. “Go ahead, tell me.”

Nat smiled, as if that was what they’d wanted the entire time. Hell, maybe it was. Maybe this whole _thing_ had been just to get him to say yes.

“You might want to sit down, Derek. This is gonna take a while.”

Derek stared at Nat with soft eyes and gave a soft sigh. “So, everything then? You’re going to tell me everything?”

Nat nodded. “Everything.”

“Everything,” he echoed. He crossed the room and sat down on the couch, hard. “Go ahead, tell me.”

Nat sat down on the chair, knees drawn up and arms folded across them. “Okay,” said Nat. They let out a sigh and scrubbed their fingers through their hair. “Let’s… start at the beginning.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are very welcome, as are concerns, questions, etc. This story is very important to me and I really, really want to talk about it. It's a long time in the worlds and I am very excited to get it out into the world once again for everyone to see. It's definitely the story I am most worried to tell,


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